Here's an interesting project: artist Daniel Moore is creating a detective story through the use of public domain images such as 1920s movie stills.
Featuring History of Mystery/Detective Fiction and Other Literary Ramblings of Elizabeth Foxwell
Monday, March 20, 2023
Creating a detective story through art.
Monday, March 13, 2023
New mystery audiobooks from Librivox.
Librivox, which marshals volunteer readers to produce free audiobooks of works in the public domain, has some new mystery-related offerings:
- A Modern Mephistopheles by Louisa May Alcott
(an Alcott "blood and thunder" tale) - The Tower Treasure by Frankin W. Dixon (the Hardy Boys debut)
- The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (man with an aristocratic title claim is murdered)
- The Unholy Three by Tod Robbins (carnival performers become criminals)
- Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter's brother is accused of murder)
- Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter looks into a potential murder)
- The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace (cop and prosecutor chase a dastardly secret society)
Want to volunteer as a reader? Visit this webpage.
Monday, March 06, 2023
Grants for academic research, Sisters in Crime.
Interested in projects of previous recipients? Go here.
Monday, February 27, 2023
Online TCU exhibition on dime novels.
Monday, February 20, 2023
The agonies of the agony column.
The Ciphers of The Times project at McGill University (headed by Nathalie Cooke) explores the Victorian agony column in the Times of London that often involved messages from criminals and detectives, including ways that messages in this column were encoded. The project includes an online interactive game where a person can play detective by following clues in a sample column. There also are discussion and data regarding "newspaper novels" (those that involve newspapers in their plots) such as The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester (aka James Redding Ware) and Lady Audley's Secret (1862) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. An additional resource is the accompanying exhibition "News and Novel Sensations."
Monday, February 13, 2023
Ruh-roh: Scooby-Doo exhibition.
Running through April 9, 2023, is "Scooby-Doo Mansion Mayhem" exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, in Dearborn, Michigan, where visitors can solve mysteries alongside Scooby, Shaggy, and gang.
Monday, February 06, 2023
Clues CFP: BIPOC female detectives.
Seeking to illuminate an often marginalized space, this Clues theme issue will focus on female detectives who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color); span eras, genres, and geographical locations; and appear in texts, TV programs, films, and other media. Of particular interest are intersections among race, indigeneity, gender, age, class, or sexuality in these works, as well as projects that center BIPOC authorship and scholarship.
Some Suggested Topics:
- BIPOC female detective figures in African and Asian crime fiction, such as in works by Leye Adenle, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Angela Makholwa, and Jane De Suza.
- BIPOC female detectives in hard-boiled and traditional mysteries that might include characters such as Carolina Garcia-Aguilera’s Lupe Solano, Eleanor Taylor Bland’s Marti MacAlister, Leslie Glass’s April Woo, Sujata Massey’s Rei Shimura and Perveen Mistry, Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, BarbaraNeely’s Blanche White, S. J. Rozan’s Lydia Chin, Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle and Odessa Jones, and Paula L. Woods’s Charlotte Justice.
- BIPOC female detectives in film and television series such as Get Christie Love! (1974–75, TV movie 2018), Angie Tribeca (2016), and Black Earth Rising (2018).
- BIPOC female detectives in comics/graphic novels such as Storm and Misty Knight of Marvel Comics, Martha Washington of Dark Horse Comics, and Vixen of DC Comics.
- BIPOC female sidekicks such as Janet Evanovich’s Lula, Elementary’s Joan H. Watson, or BIPOC detecting teams such as those in Cheryl Head’s Charlie Mack series or Ausmat Zehanat Khan’s Inaya Rahman series.
- BIPOC female detectives of male authors such as Kwei Quartey, Deon Meyer, and Alexander McCall Smith.
- Analyses of historical BIPOC female detectives in crime fiction such as in Fergus Hume’s Hagar of the Pawnshop (1898) and Pauline E. Hopkins’s Hagar’s Daughter (1901).
- Analyses that queer the BIPOC female detective, or examine the intersections between gender and sexuality in these works.
- Relationships between BIPOC female detectives and criminals/criminality.
Submissions should include a proposal of approximately 250 words and a brief biosketch. Proposals due: April 30, 2023. Submit proposals to: Prof. Sam Naidu, email: s.naidu <at> ru.ac.za. Full manuscripts of approximately 6,000 words based on an accepted proposal will be due by September 30, 2023.
Monday, January 30, 2023
Henry Mancini and Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.
Monday, January 23, 2023
Shirley Jackson panel.
Monday, January 16, 2023
Sherlock Holmes items from Guymon collection at California Antiquarian Book Fair.
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Ned Guymon with his first wife, Ernestine, in 1923. |
There also is a Guymon collection at Bowling Green State University.
Monday, January 09, 2023
Upcoming classic thrillers, Library of America.
(1) Five Classic Thrillers 1961–1964 (The Murderers by Fredric Brown, The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, Dead Calm by Charles Williams, The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, The Score by Richard Stark [Donald Westlake])
(2) Four Classic Thrillers 1964–1969 (The Fiend by Margaret Millar, Doll by Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], Run Man Run by Chester Himes, The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith)
Below are some critics' reactions to the works in these volumes.
Re Brown's The Murderers: Sgt. Cuff [John Winterich] in 30 Sept. 1961 Saturday Review dubbed it "highly amative."
Re Highsmith's Tremor of Forgery: Terrence Rafferty in the 4 Jan. 1988 New Yorker dubbed the book "nihilistic."
Re Himes's Run Man Run: Sgt. Cuff in the 31 Dec. 1966 Saturday Review regarded this as a "[t]aut, devilish, ably-written slice of life—and death."
Re Hughes's Expendable Man (Edgar nominee, Best Novel): Kirkus lauded its "savage momentum."
Re Marlowe's The Name of the Game Is Death: Anthony Boucher in the 11 Feb 1962 New York Times believed that Marlowe had reached "an impressive new high."