McFarland bk sale (incl Companions to Mystery Fiction).

It's a good time to buy volumes in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit; there's a 40-percent off sale on all McFarland books running through November 27, 2023 (use coupon code HOLIDAY23).

Clues 35.2 published: Bentley, Charteris, Christie, Hammett, Melville, et al.

Clues 35.2 (2017) has been published; abstracts follow below. In addition to the print version (which can be ordered from McFarland), the issue is available on Kindle,  Google Play, and Nook.

Introduction: In Conversation
Janice M. Allan (University of Salford)
The executive editor of Clues discusses the contents of the issue, including analyses of works by E. C. Bentley, Benjamin Black, Andrea Camilleri, Leslie Charteris, Agatha Christie, Tana French, Dashiell Hammett, and Herman Melville, and the TV series True Detective.

“The Impotence of Human Reason”:
E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case and the Antidetective Text 
Nathan Ashman (University of Surrey)
This article considers the subversion of the analytical detective format in E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case (1913). Exploring the text’s problematization of concepts such as logic and reason as well as its disruption of the detective’s ocularcentric interpretative framework, the author highlights the ways in which Trent’s Last Case unsettles delineations between the classic analytic detective story and the metaphysical or antidetective text.

Watchful Eyes and Smiling Masks in The Maltese Falcon 
Nils Clausson
This article calls attention to the more than 250 references to eyes and their pervasive role in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, arguing that the novel portrays a world in which trying to see past duplicity, dissimulation, and role playing of others, while seeking to hide one’s own, is pervasive.

Labyrinths of Uncertainty:
True Detective and the Metaphysics of Investigation
Paul Sheehan and Lauren Alice (Macquarie University)
This article outlines some of the salient features and ad hoc history of metaphysical detective fiction (MPDF). Using True Detective season 1 as a case study, it explores how the series takes advantage of new programming freedoms to dramatize MPDF for a “broadcast literature” audience.

“A wholly other world of things, hidden”:
Benjamin Black’s and Tana French’s Criminal Worlds 
Kersti Tarien Powell (Saint Joseph's University)
This essay examines the recent success of Irish crime fiction through the works of Tana French and John Banville/Benjamin Black. Whereas the classic detective novel seeks to narrow multiple possibilities down to one determinate solution, French and Black resist this narrative pattern. In so doing, their novels both reclaim and reinvent the Irish literary tradition.

Crime Stories and Urban Fantasy
Stefan Ekman (University of Gothenburg)
Among the many unexplored areas of urban fantasy is its relation to crime fiction. This article explores how features of the crime story are used to emphasize, reinforce, or introduce urban fantasy’s social commentary. It looks at the genres’ relationship, analyzing three urban fantasies and their respective crime fiction elements.

Camilleri’s Montalbano: Aging, Nostalgia, and the Midlife Crisis
Stephen Derek Kolsky (University of Melbourne)
Salvo Montalbano, the protagonist of Andrea Camilleri’s detective series, goes through a midlife crisis that creates a biographical and ideological line of separation between the earlier and later novels, resulting in a new emphasis on the personal in the form of fleeting passionate engagements and less on social commitment.

Andrea Camilleri companion now available.

I'm happy to report that Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Lucia Rinaldi— no. 5 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit—is now out, some two months earlier than anticipated. This is a comprehensive treatment of the works of the creator of Inspector Salvo Montalbano and one of the few resources in English on the author's work that is available.

Not a fan of Inspector Montalbano.

Luca Zingaretti as
Inspector Salvo Montalbano

Critical Studies in Television's Kim Akass doesn't think much of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano (now on view on BBC 4, broadcast as Detective Montalbano in the United States), taking issue with the portrayal of women. (The upcoming Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Lucia Rinaldi that I edited deals with Camilleri's treatment of women, among other topics.)

Preliminary info, Camilleri companion (ed. Foxwell)

McFarland has posted some preliminary details on Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, no. 5 in the series I edit for the publisher. University College London's Lucia Rinaldi is the author, and the book is tentatively slated for release in summer 2012.

Camilleri, a mega-bestseller in his native Italy and quite popular in other countries as well, created Sicilian inspector Salvo Montalbano, who has been featured in a

DVD from
Detective Montalbano
series

long-running television series, Detective Montalbano.

His novels have been shortlisted several times for the British Crime Writers Assn's International Dagger. As there are few resources available on his work in English, this companion should be useful to fans and scholars alike.

Update, 4-5-12.  Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction is now available from McFarland.