Vol 42, no. 1 (2024) of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published; see below for abstracts. For print issues or subscriptions, contact McFarland. Ebook versions are available via Kindle and Nook.
Update, 25 May 2024: Google Play ebook of the issue is now available.
Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of Cultures and Works
Caroline Reitz (John Jay College of Criminal Justice–CUNY / CUNY Graduate Center)
The executive editor of Clues provides an overview of the issue, including articles on John Dickson Carr; Agatha Christie; Arthur Conan Doyle in Dutch translation; Umberto Eco; a YA mystery series featuring Indigenous issues; island mysteries; Korean crime fiction; and noir’s relationship with works by William Faulkner, David Goodis, and John D. MacDonald.
Spotlight on... Crime Fiction in Korea: Transformation and Transnationality of the Genre
Jooyeon Rhee (Penn State University)
This essay traces the transnational literary flow and popular imaginations of modernity in colonial Korea (1910–45), the effect of the Korean War and the Cold War, and diverse responses to global neoliberalism in contemporary Korea. It highlights representative themes in each period and notable writers in modern crime fiction.
“A Modernist Lampstand”: Noir and the Avant-garde in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary
Alex Davis (University College Cork, Ireland)
This essay considers Sanctuary in the context of William Faulkner’s career-long predilection for crime fiction, interpreting his avant-garde appropriation and manipulation of genre writing in the novel against the background of its relationship to American naturalism (including the noir novel) and nineteenth-century European realism.
Despair and the Noir Character
Michael Caleb Tasker
Noir’s atmosphere of anxiety and/or despair stems not from environment and setting but rather from character and from an outsider defined by and riddled with a very Kierkegaardian sense of existentialist despair. As works by John D. MacDonald and David Goodis demonstrate, the despairing protagonist is the foremost defining characteristic of noir fiction.
“Nobody in the Renaissance conceived of a revenge quite so delicious”:
John Dickson Carr’s Bencolin Stories and Jacobean Revenge Plays
Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
This article argues that John Dickson Carr’s first four novels about Inspector Henri Bencolin each draw from a different early modern revenge tragedy: It Walks by Night alludes to John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi; Castle Skull borrows names and atmosphere from Henry Chettle’s Hoffman; The Lost Gallows nods to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy; and The Corpse in the Waxworks evokes Thomas Middleton’s and William Rowley’s The Changeling.
Detection, Deception, and Interpretation: Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero
Rhys William Tyers
In Numero Zero, Umberto Eco employs the tropes of the postmodernist detective novel to investigate interpretation, textual disorientation, and the problematic influence of the news industry. The message seems to be that we need to all become better detectives regarding language interpretation and manipulation.
How Sherlock Holmes Can Change Through Translation and Adaptation:
A Case Study of “The Red-Headed League”
Jo De Brie (Ghent University, Belgium)
A Dutch translation of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story “The Red-Headed League,” published in serial form in the Flemish newspaper Het Volk in 1911, displays considerable changes from the original. Sherlock Holmes is more generic and superficial, references to London are much vaguer, and lowbrow features are augmented. This translation strategy is connected to the intended readership.
Witches and Pharmacists in Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse
Sylvia A. Pamboukian (Robert Morris University)
At first glance, witches and pharmacists have little in common. Yet Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse imaginatively links these unlikely figures through a common desire for greater visibility and social power, offering an astute analysis of the dynamics of self-representation, the consequences of social invisibility, and the benefits of reading beyond the puzzle plot into the seemingly marginal details of detective fiction.
Islands ofCrime: The Island as a Setting in Crime Fiction
Šárka Bubíková and Olga Roebuck (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic)
The article explores how the traditional notions of islandness such as boundedness, isolation, and remoteness are validated or subverted in mystery novels by Philip R. Craig, Robert Harris, P.D. James, Peter May, and Cynthia Riggs that have an island setting and a detective who is an insider or an outsider.
The Mighty Muskrats: An Indigenous Children’s Detective Series
Amy Cummins (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley)
This article analyzes the cultural content and literary elements of the first children’s detective series by an Indigenous (First Nations) author. Four cousins investigate cases of local and systemic injustice in the Mighty Muskrats mystery series (Second Story P, 2019– ) by Michael Hutchinson, a citizen of the Misipawistik Cree Nation.
REVIEWS
David
Bordwell. Perplexing Plots: Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder
Phyllis M. Betz (La Salle University)
Sian MacArthur. Gender Roles and Political Contexts in Cold War Spy Fiction
Heike Henderson (Boise State University)
Fabricio Tocco. Latin American Detectives Against Power: Individualism, the State,
and Failure in Crime Fiction
Clare Rolens (Palomar College)
Sylvia A. Pamboukian. Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison
Annika R.P. Deutsch (University of Utah)
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