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.
"No Past": Feminism, Queerness, and Colonialism in The Likeness
MIRANDA STEEGE (Univ of Pittsburgh)
Tana French's novel The Likeness utilizes key elements of the mystery genre to test out modes of living that offer solutions to heteropatriarchal violence. These modes ultimately fail because they lack an adequate anticolonial, anticapitalist politics.
People Are Like Homes: Duality in the Novels of Louise Penny
RACHEL SCHAFFER (Montana State Univ Billings)
In her Three Pines series, Louise Penny uses the concept of duality in characters and settings to create a deeply optimistic vision of human nature, demonstrating that it is possible to resolve both internal and external conflicts so that people can live in harmony with themselves and with each other, despite their differences.
Postmodern Crime Fiction in Modernist Form: Reading Palahniuk's Fight Club as Detective Fiction
PHIL HALTON (Univ of Gloucestershire, UK)
This essay argues that Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club adopts postmodern theories and aesthetics yet is more aligned with modernist conventions. Fight Club destabilizes grand narratives, critiques hyperreality, and employs rhizomatic structures to reflect the decentralization of power and meaning. Palahniuk strains the genre's conventions to accommodate postmodern critique without discarding them.
REVIEWS
Rebecca Josephy, ed. Magic, Magicians and Detective Fiction: Essays on Intersecting Modes of Mystery
DANIEL STASHOWER
Robert Morgan. Fallen Angel: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe
CYNTHIA S. HAMILTON (Liverpool Hope Univ)
Mary Fortune, auth.; Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown, eds. Nothing but Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging
NICHOLAS BIRNS (New York Univ)
Thomas W. Kniesche. Investigating Crime in a Time of War: Historical Crime Fiction and the Representation of Fascism
TARA KRAFT-AINSWORTH (Univ of Georgia)
Ashley Lawson. On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett
K.A. LAITY
Charlotte Beyer. Crime Fiction in the Age of #Me'Too
KATRINA YOUNES (Trent Univ, Canada)
Devin Fromm. Detective Fiction on the Case of Community: The Mystery at the Heart of the Modern
ASHLEY LAWSON (West Virginia Wesleyan College)
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