Tuesday, July 30, 2019

A Man Betrayed (1941).

In A Man Betrayed, John Wayne is a small-town attorney looking into the suspicious death of a friend and uncovers skullduggery in big-city politics. Frances Dee and Ward Bond costar.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Hillerman biography in progress.

This article in the July 7 Albuquerque Journal on the University of New Mexico's Center for Southwest Research reveals that author James McGrath Morris (Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power) is working on a biography of Tony Hillerman.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

One Body Too Many (1944).

In One Body Too Many, mild-mannered insurance agent Albert Tuttle (Jack Haley) encounters scheming relatives of a recently deceased millionaire who seem intent on doing away with the millionaire's niece (Jean Parker). Bela Lugosi costars.


Monday, July 22, 2019

The nefarious state of Wisconsin.

In the Wisconsin State Journal, several mystery authors (such as Victoria Houston, who writes the Loon Lake mystery series with fly-fishing enthusiast and chief of police Lewellyn Ferris) discuss why the state is such an inviting setting for mystery.

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

The Big Frame (aka The Lost Hours, 1952).

In The Big Frame, pilot Mark Stevens quarrels with a friend, waking up the next morning at a unfamiliar hotel as Scotland Yard's top suspect in the friend's murder.

Monday, July 15, 2019

The gifts of Celia Fremlin.

Author Lucy Lethbridge in the July 2019 issue of The Oldie lauds Celia Fremlin's Edgar-winning The Hours Before Dawn (1958) and the skills applied by Fremlin from her time in the British project Mass Observation. Says Lethbridge, "This is a novel about intelligent, frustrated women in the impoverished disappointment of 1950s London."

Tuesday, July 09, 2019

Everything Is Thunder (1936).

Based on the novel by former British Army officer Jocelyn Lee Hardy, Everything Is Thunder features a prostitute (Constance Bennett) who attempts to help a prisoner of war (Douglas Montgomery) escape from Nazi Germany.

Monday, July 08, 2019

A walk with Anthony Boucher.

Jeffrey Marks's Anthony Boucher:
A Biobibliography
(McFarland)
Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association has scheduled a July 21 walk of South Berkeley (CA) locations associated with mystery/sci fi author-editor-critic Anthony Boucher (aka William Anthony Parker White). The walk will be guided by Randal Brandt, a librarian who curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library.