Avery Hopwood, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and "The Bat."

Avery Hopwood with dancer Rose Rolanda, n.d.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div

In the Cheboygan [MI] Daily Tribune, Kathy King Johnson discusses playwright Avery Hopwood (1882–1928) and "The Bat," his wildly successful theatrical collaboration with Mary Roberts Rinehart. The play, which debuted on Broadway in 1920, features a houseful of guests contending with a master criminal dubbed "The Bat."

Taibo on le Carré.

In Jacobin magazine, distinguished novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II writes of his great admiration for the work of John le Carré. Says Taibo, "The grace of le Carré’s style lies not in great anecdotes but in the journey through a human landscape peopled by agents addicted to the love of adrenaline or danger or the dilettantes, civil servants, schemers, and Cold War bureaucrats’ impossibly abstract fidelity and professionalism."