The pioneering Mary Fortune.

Collection of Mary Fortune stories
published by Verse Chorus Press and
coedited by Lucy Sussex and 
Megan Brown

The Nightlife radio program on the Australian Broadcasting Corp. discusses with author Lucy Sussex the pioneering mystery work by Mary Fortune (1833–1911).

Poe, other content at upcoming Amer Literature Assn mtg.

Edgar Allan Poe, 1848.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photos Div.

The American Literature Assn conference will take place at Chicago's Palmer House on May 20–23, 2026. Mystery fans may be interested in the following papers:

The Novel: Formal and Ethical Considerations (May 21)
• “Spectacular Violence, Speculative Truth: JFK, Conspiracy Culture, and Birth of the True Crime
Novel,” Pinar Tasdemir, Univ of Wisconsin–Madison

Religion in Contemporary American Fiction (May 21)
• “Late Thomas Pynchon: Detective Fiction and the Inner Life,” Luke Ferretter, Baylor Univ 

Reassessments, Secrets, and Revelations (May 21)
• “Revealing the Secrets of Rawson’s Magical Mysteries,” Neil Tobin, Independent Scholar 

An American Tragedy: A New Musical based on Theodore Dreiser’s Novel (May 21) 

Pairing Poe in the Classroom (May 22)
Chair: Philip Edward Phillips, Middle Tennessee State Univ
• “Seeing and Seaing Wrong: Poe, Melville, and Interpretive Failure at Sea,” Sam Gleason, Pellissippi State Community College
• “Teaching the Abyss of Justification: Poe, Ngũgĩ, and the Collapse of Oppressive Rationalizations," Juliet Tawiah, Northern Illinois Univ
• “Poe and Poe AI: Calculating Fictions and the Philosophy of Artificial Composition," Craig Carey, Univ of Southern Mississippi

Postwar Consumerism and Consumption (May 22)
• “The Rise of the Working-Class Cop in the Novels of Ed McBain,” Joseph George, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State Univ

The Gothic's Successor Genres (May 22)
• "'Deep Red Bells': Shallow Graves and Uneven Development in True Crime's South," Jennie Lightweis-Goff
• "Gritty Gothic Noir: The Evolution of the Southern Gothic in Michael Farris Smith," Peter Ingrao
(Univ of Texas at Dallas)

Literary Movements after Poe (May 22)
Chair: Margarida Vale de Gato, Universidade de Lisboa
• “The Fall of the House of Nowak: Esmé Weijun Wang's Revision of Edgar Allan Poe," Andy Harper, St. Louis Univ
• “Rosa Arciniega's Descent into Poe's Maelstrom," Micah K. Donohue, Eastern New Mexico Univ
• “Cannibalizing Poe: The 'Pure Potential' of White Monstrosity in Edgar Allan Poe and Mónica Ojeda," Noah Reed Miranda, Smittcamp Family Honors College at California State Univ (Fresno) 

Don DeLillo and the Canon of Literature (May 22)
Chair: Jesse Kavadlo, Maryville Univ
• "Doubling Dostoevsky: DeLillo's 'Midnight in Dostoevsky,’" Mark Osteen, Loyola Univ Maryland
• "‘Two Days Wrong!:' DeLillo's Textures of Time," Crystal Alberts, Univ of North Dakota
• “Owning Narrative in DeLillo and Eco,” Michael Streit, Independent Scholar
• “He Writes in Your Voice, American: DeLillo and Some Paradoxes of the Great American Novel” 

Policed Bodies and Minds in American Literature (May 23)
• “An Irresistible and Uncontrollable Impulse’: The Legal Context for Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Imp of the Perverse,’” Rene H. Treviño, California State Univ

Clues 44.1: Indian crime fiction, French, Haycraft, James, Nancy Drew, Palahniuk, Penny, Rawson, and more.

Clues vol. 44, no. 1 (2026) has been published. See below for abstracts. For a subscription, contact McFarland. This post will be updated when the ebook versions are available.

Introduction: Allusions and Illusions
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY/CUNY Graduate School)
Caroline Reitz, the executive editor of Clues, discusses the contents of the issue, including articles on crime fiction from India, Howard Haycraft's World War II writings, and queer aspects of Nancy Drew, as well as authors John Franklin Bardin, Tana French, P.D. James, Chuck Palahniuk, Louise Penny, Clayton Rawson, and Robert Egerton Swartwout.

Spotlight on... Indian Crime Fiction
TARUN K. SAINT
This essay traces the genre's evolution in India from its inception in the colonial era to recent times. Discussed are regional contexts of crime writing in Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Tamil to establish the historical framework and the recent efflorescence of crime writing in English that has feminist and postcolonial aspects.

Rethinking Democracy and Detective Fiction: The Legacies of Haycraft's Wartime Writings
BARBARA PEZZOTTI AND FABRICIO TOCCO (Monash Univ)
Howard Haycraft's "Dictators, Democrats, and Detectives" (1939); "The Future of the Detective Story"; and "The Rules of the Game" (1941) argued that detective fiction could only flourish in democracies. The authors demonstrate that crime fiction has proven versatile under dictatorships, functioning as a propaganda tool and an instrument of resistance.

"Magical Red Herrings": Personalized Experience and Specialized Knowledge in Clayton Rawson's The Footprints on the Ceiling
NEIL TOBIN
Clayton Rawson, like other magician-authors, was known to employ transferable magical skills while writing his popular mysteries. What may be unique in the genre was his use of a particular magical technique to create extra-deceptive red herrings that target subsets of his readership—and turn their specialized knowledge against them.

Discovering John Franklin Bardin
ROBERT LANCE SNYDER
John Franklin Bardin's The Deadly Percheron (1946), The Last of Philip Banter (1947), and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly (1948) explore dissociative identity disorder. His works, as well as novels by Patricia Highsmith, Helen Eustis, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Millar, substantiate the syndrome's topical frequency after World War II.

Metafiction as Misdirection in R.E. Swartwout's The Boat Race Murder (1933)
COLIN CAVENDISH-JONES (Xiamen Univ, Malaysia)
The Boat Race Murder, Robert Egerton Swartwout's only mystery novel, presents the reader with a plethora of literary references to the previous century of detective stories and locked-room mysteries. Through these references, Swartwout misdirects the reader to expect an intricate solution and an obscure motive for a murder, which is, in fact, simple and committed for sordid financial gain.

Lost Allusions: The Changing Codes of P.D. James
MARJORIE GARBER (Harvard Univ)
Like Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Josephine Tey, P.D. James sometimes used literary allusions in her book titles and plots. Over time, however, the signifying codes in her work began to change, first to hidden "Easter egg" messages and "true crime" references, and finally to modern scientific markers like DNA.

The Gothic and the Girl Detective: Unpacking the Queered) Signification of Nancy Drew
DOROTHY CALABRO (Auburn Univ)
This essay connects the gothic and the queer in the original Nancy Drew mysteries with modern, queer(ed) adaptations to the Nancy Drew universe, including Mabel Maney's Nancy Clue series and Kelly Thompson's Nancy Drew comics. The rift between the represented ideology of the original Nancy Drew mysteries and the gothic truths they hide are embodied in the interpretations and adaptations of queer audiences.

New from McFarland: History of Dial M for Murder.

Hot off the presses at McFarland and Co. is Frederick Knott and Dial M for Murder, in which playwright Richard Weill traces the history of the Edgar-winning play. Included are discussions of Knott's great difficulties in writing Dial M, the Alfred Hitchcock and Andrew Davis films, international productions, and other works by Knott such as Wait Until Dark and Write Me a Murder.

Best Part of the Book podcast: Clues: A Journal of Detection.

On McFarland's Best Part of the Book podcast, executive editor Caroline Reitz (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY/CUNY Graduate Center) and I chat with host Mark Perzel about Clues: A Journal of Detection. Topics include the appeal of mysteries, the history of the journal, revelations that first appeared in the journal, and the most recent issue on disability and detective fiction. Those who would like to subscribe to the journal can receive a 25% discount with the coupon code BESTPART (email journals [at] mcfarlandpub.com).

Film Music Friday: Alfred Hitchcock.

The latest episode of Kansas Public Radio's Film Music Friday focuses on music in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, including The Man Who Knew Too Much (composer: Bernard Herrmann), North by Northwest (composer: Bernard Herrmann), Psycho (composer: Bernard Herrmann), Rear Window (composer: Franz Waxman), To Catch a Thief (composer: Lyn Murray), and Vertigo (composer: Bernard Herrmann).

2026 Dove Awardee: Stewart King.

Stewart King's Murder in the 
Multinational State: Crime Fiction
from Spain (Routledge, 2019)

The latest recipient of the Dove Award—which is awarded by the Popular Culture Association's Mystery and Detective Fiction Area and recognizes contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction—is Stewart King, associate professor of European languages at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). King, a specialist in Spanish and Catalan crime fiction, has edited or coedited 6 books (e.g., the Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction, 2022), produced 35 book chapters and 28 articles, as well as coedits the journal Crime Fiction Studies. He previously served on the editorial board of Clues: A Journal of Detection (I am managing editor of the journal).

The award is named for past PCA president and distinguished mystery scholar George N. Dove (1913–2003). Past recipients of the Dove Award include Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY), J.C. Bernthal, Martin Edwards, Barry Forshaw, Douglas G. Greene, P. D. James, Christine Jackson, H. R. F. Keating, Margaret Kinsman, Maureen Reddy (Rhode Island College), Janet Rudolph, J. K. Van Dover (Lincoln University), and yours truly.

Milwaukee Rep's Agatha Christie Festival.

 

Agatha Christie, Sept 1964. Dutch National Archives

Milwaukee Rep is hosting an Agatha Christie Festival through June, which includes the following:

• A display in the Rep's Sandra & William Haack Galleria that traces Christie's life and career. 
  
  
• A March 31 screening of Death on the Nile (1978).
  
  
• A free April 7 event, "The Enduring Mystery of Agatha Christie from Page to Stage," at Boswell Book Co. with Christopher Chan of Agatha Christie Ltd. and Laura Braza, director of the Rep production of And Then There Were None.
  
  
• Whodunit Wednesdays, a reading series in April and May at Milwaukee Public Libraries. 
  
  
• A Rep production of And Then There Were None (May 26–June 8, Ellen & Joe Checota Powerhouse Theater)

Score to Christie's Witness for the Prosecution (1982).

As John Bettencourt notes in Film Score Friday, Caldera has released John Cameron's score for Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution (dir. Alan Gibson, 1982). This TV production features Beau Bridges, Michael Gough, Wendy Hiller, Deborah Kerr, Donald Pleasence, Ralph Richardson, and Diana Rigg. For more information or to listen to some clips, go here. 

Film music by Dmitri Tompkin.

As Scott Bettencourt notes in Film Score Friday, Intrada has issued From New York to Hollywood: Music for Albertina Rausch and Classic Films, performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and featuring works by composer Dmitri Tompkin for movies such as Lost Horizon and It's a Wonderful Life. Also included is "Fisherman's Jive" from the film noir D.O.A. (1949).

Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A. (1949)

New mystery audiobooks from Librivox.

John Dickson Carr's It Walks by Night

New free audio mystery releases from Librivox.

• It Walks by Night. John Dickson Carr's debut novel. Wrote the 22 Aug 1930 [Christchurch, NZ] Star, "Mr. Carr carries us along breathlessly .... this original crime story is well constructed, eminently readable, and calculated to give satisfaction to those fond of a thrill"). 
  
  
• The Continental Op, The Maltese Falcon, and Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. The 25 Feb. 1950 Lewiston [ME] Evening Journal mentioned that the Continental Op was based on a Pinkerton detective who worked with Hammett.
  
  
• The Law of the Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace. Wrote the 3 Apr. 1926 Otago [NZ] Daily Times, "It is an illustration of Mr. Wallace's skill that he is able to cast over the story that air of verisimilitude which carries the reader along on a wave of excitement."

James Sallis, 1944–2026.

Nathan Ashman's James Sallis:
A Companion to the Mystery Fiction

Author James Sallis died on Jan 27 at age 81. Although he might be best known for Drive (adapted as a film with Ryan Gosling and Carrie Mulligan), he had a long and distinguished career, not only in mystery fiction but also in science fiction and as a critic. There are many admirers of his Lew Griffin series (e.g., The Long Legged Fly), and he wrote a well-respected biography of Chester Himes. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Bouchercon, the Hammett Award for literary excellence in crime writing, and the Grand Prix de Littérature policière.  

He wrote to me after James Sallis: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Nathan Ashman had won the Edgar Award for best biographical/critical work (I edited the book), expressing his appreciation for Nathan's hard work and mentioning that his email box had been filling up with congratulations after the Edgar win (It was the first Edgar win for a book in the series, although the Ian Rankin companion and the James Ellroy companion had been Edgar nominees). He also related a funny story: when he was reading the companion, he discovered to his horror that he had forgotten about three short stories discussed by Nathan, and he was in the midst of compiling a collection of his "complete" short stories. He sent an SOS to his editor, rooted around in his files, found the stories, and managed to include them in the volume. Said he, "So Nathan, and you, have to take the blame for those three."

James Sallis' biography of Chester Himes, 
called "smart, conscientious, often stylish" 
by Robert Polito in NYT

 

Poisons in Golden Age mysteries.

Over on the Science Museum Group blog, Chloë Abley discusses poisons in Golden Age mysteries, including their use in works by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Maps in mystery fiction.

As The Map Room blog points out, an article by Axel Bax et al. (Cornell University) in Computational Humanities Research 2025 that takes a deep dive into the presence of maps in fiction indicates—probably to no surprise of mystery fans—that "small-scale maps often were in the detective/mystery genre." 

Map from Anna Katharine Green's Lost Man's Lane (1899)

Film Music Friday: Jerry Goldsmith.

A recent episode of Kansas Public Radio's Film Music Friday featured the TV work of Jerry Goldsmith who moved from clerk-typist to composer. Selections include his work for The Man from U.N.C.L.E, The Twilight Zone, and more. 

A release of music from The Man from 
U.N.C.L.E. that includes Jerry Goldsmith's work

New edition of The Maltese Falcon.

Blackstone Publishing has issued a new illustrated edition of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (originally published in 1930).