The talent of artist Alex Raymond.

Alex Raymond: An Artistic Journey—
Adventure, Intrigue, and Romance
by Ron Goulart

On the Goodman Games website Joshua LH Burnett offers a profile of Alex Raymond (1909–56), the artist of the comic strips Secret Agent X-9 (written by Dashiell Hammett), Flash Gordon, and private detective Rip Kirby.

Whodunit: The Musical (inspired by Rinehart).

The Actors Theatre of Indiana will be presenting Whodunit: The Musical from January 31 to February 16, 2025, at Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts' Studio Theater in Carmel, IN. Written by Ed Dixon, the musical is based on Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase (1908) and Rinehart and Avery Hopwood's subsequent successful play The Bat (1920). Bodies begin dropping amid skullduggery at a house in Connecticut.

Grolier Club exhibition: "Imaginary Books."

Sheridan Le Fanu.

On view until February 15, 2025, and online is the exhibition "Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books" at the Grolier Club in New York City. These are nonexistent works that appear in other works. Mysteries include "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" by John H. Watson and Death 'Twixt Wind and Water by Harriet Vane. Vane's study of Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu and Lord Peter Wimsey's scholarly works also are featured. I was most tickled to see The History of Ancient Egypt by famed irascible Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson (first mentioned in Elizabeth Peters' The Deeds of the Disturber).

Film music news: John Barry, Bernard Herrmann.

In Film Score Friday, Scott Bettencourt provides news of new releases of a La-La Land anniversary edition of John Barry's scores for the James Bond films The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and Moonraker (1979), as well as a Music Box remastered score by Bernard Herrmann for the 1973 film Sisters (dir. Brian De Palma, starring Margot Kidder and Charles Durning). 

• Clips from The Man with the Golden Gun score plus order information
• Clips from the Moonraker score plus order information
• Clips from the Sisters score plus order information

Margot Kidder in Sisters (1973)

Film Music Friday: Whodunits.

Edward G. Robinson in
The Red House (1947)

The latest episode of Kansas Public Radio's Film Music Friday focuses on whodunits. Included is music from The Big Sleep (composer: Max Steiner), Chinatown (composer: Jerry Goldsmith), High and Low (composer: Masaru Sato), Knives Out (composer: Nathan Johnson), Murder on the Orient Express (composer: Richard Rodney Bennett), and The Red House (composer: Miklós Rózsa).