Three mystery exhibitions, Toronto Public Library.

The following exhibitions just opened at the Toronto Public Library:

Poster for Sherlock Holmes
with William Gillette, 1901.
Arthur Conan Doyle Collection,
Toronto Public Library

• "Meddling Kids: A Children's Mystery Book Exhibit" (Osborn Collection of Early Children's Books, Lillian H. Smith Library, Toronto Public Library; runs through April 16, 2022). See digitized items from the collection here.

• "Cracking the Case: Sleuths in Speculative Fiction" (Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, Lillian H. Smith Library, Toronto Public Library; runs through April 2, 2022). See digitized items from the collection here.

• "A Study in Sherlock and His Creator: 50 Years of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection" (TD Gallery, Toronto Reference Library). See digitized items from the collection here.

"Mapping Fiction" exhibition, the Huntington.

The "Mapping Fiction" exhibition at Los Angeles' Huntington Library features the role of maps in fiction and is on view until May 2. It includes Loren Latker's "Shamus Town" map of the Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles and an orange crate label from Tarzana Hills (originally named in honor of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan).

Hornung's John Dollar.

Illustration by Frederic Dorr Steele from "The Physician Who Healed Himself"
by E. W. Hornung. Everybody's Magazine, May 1913, p. 599.

On the Interesting Literature blog, Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) discusses criminal psychologist John Dollar, created by Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law E. W. Hornung. The Dollar stories can be read here.

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."