Newberry Library course, the Golden Age of Mystery.

Elzbieta Foeller-Pituch (Northwestern University) will be teaching the Newberry Library online course "The Golden Age of Mystery Fiction: Soft-Boiled and Hard-Boiled," which will run from Oct 14–Nov 11, 2026 and will "explore the role of popular culture in both exposing and containing societal anxieties and aspirations." Books expected to be covered are Vera Caspary, Laura; Agatha Christie, The Labors of Hercules and The 13 Problems; Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Boscombe Valley Mystery, "The Red Headed League," and "Silver Blaze"; and Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon.  

Return to Reichenbach Falls.

"The Death of Sherlock Holmes"
by Sidney Paget. 1893.

Members of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London recently re-created the fateful encounter between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. 

Vincent Starrett conference, Oct. 2026.

Vincent Starrett, ca. 1926.

The Torists International will be hosting the conference "And It Is Always 1895" in honor of the 140th birthday of writer, journalist, critic, collector, and noted Sherlockian Vincent Starrett (1886–1974) on Oct. 23–25, 2026, in Bensenville, IL (near O'Hare Airport). Guest speakers will include Ray Betzner, editor of Starrett's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (orig. publ. 1933), and author-critic Michael Dirda. A trip to Starrett's gravesite in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery also is planned (the organization is interested in establishing an endowment that would assist in maintaining the gravesite). As the registration fee is scheduled to increase in August, it is probably a good idea to register early. 

The title of the conference refers to a line in Starrett's famous poem "221B." 

The Rosenbach's Sherlock Monthly programs.

"Lestrade took out his official note-book."
Illustration by Sidney Paget for "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,"
 by Arthur Conan Doyle. The Strand Magazine, May 1904.

The Rosenbach offers Sherlock Monthly, a free series of programs delving into the Sherlock Holmes canon. Recent episodes focus on "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter" (1904), "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez" (1904), "The Adventure of the Three Students" (1904), "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" (1904), "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" (1904), and "The Adventure of Black Peter" (1904). The programs are archived.

2025 lectures on Arthur Conan Doyle.

Arthur Conan Doyle, 
NYPL

If you missed this year's lectures related to Arthur Conan Doyle (hosted by the Conan Doyle Collection in Plymouth, UK), you can now watch them online:

• "Conan Doyle: Adventurous Life, Enduring Memories" (Burt Wolder. Although the label on this states "Marriage and Divorce," it's actually the "Adventurous Life" presentation)
  
  
• "Conan Doyle: Marriage and Divorce" (Jonathan Cranfield. Although the label on this states "Adventurous Life," it's actually the "Marriage and Divorce" presentation)
  
  
• "Conan Doyle: Misquoter" (Sheldon Goldfarb)
  
  
• "If Arthur Conan Doyle Met Charles Dickens" (Clifford Goldfarb)

For summaries of the lecture topics, go here. 

Rebecca Josephy on magic and detective fiction.

On The Magic Book podcast, Rebecca Josephy (Oakland Univ) talks about the collection she edited, Magic, Magicians and Detective Fiction: Essays on Intersecting Modes of Mystery (McFarland, 2025), on the use of magic and magicians in mysteries, including discussion of impossible crimes and supernatural elements. It analyzes this subgenre's nineteenth-century roots and features reflections on writers such as Canadian-born author Grant Allen (An African Millionaire), Japanese writer Edogawa Ranpo, and American magician-author-editor-illustrator Clayton Rawson. Josephy, a French literature and detective fiction specialist, contributes an essay on gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, created by Maurice Leblanc.

• Review of Magic, Magicians and Detective Fiction in Mythlore, vol. 43, no. 2 (2025). 

• Read about Josephy's earlier Clues article, "A Study in Daniel: Tracing the Biblical Origins of Sherlock Holmes" (38.1, 2020)

Film Music Friday: "Sherlock Holmes in the Movies."

 

Nicol Williamson as Sherlock Holmes in
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)

A recent episode of Kansas Public Radio's Film Music Friday is on "Sherlock Holmes in the Movies," with selections ranging from The Hound of the Baskervilles and Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Young Sherlock Holmes.

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).

Anthony Burgess: Mystery fan.

On the International Anthony Burgess Foundation website, Andrew Biswell discusses the author of A Clockwork Orange's love of detective fiction, including his admiration for Wilkie Collins and his Sherlock Holmes story "Murder to Music."

Clues 42.1: Carr, Christie, Conan Doyle, Eco, Faulkner, island mysteries, Korean crime fiction, etc.

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. 

Sherlock Holmes through an ethical lens.

Tom Fox of the Adventures in Compliance Podcast looks at Arthur Conan Doyle's The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes through an unusual lens, "review[ing] each story and min[ing] them for leadership, compliance, and ethical lessons." He notes, "The Sherlock Holmes stories, including 'The Adventure of the Yellow Face,' offer valuable leadership lessons and shed light on societal issues of the Victorian era." For a rundown of the episodes, go here.

Clues CFP: "Disability and Detective Fiction"

Theme Issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection
Guest Editors: Susannah B. Mintz (Skidmore College) and Mark Osteen (Loyola University Maryland) 

The guest editors welcome proposals for a theme issue of Clues focusing on the representation of disability, broadly defined, in crime and mystery fiction, television shows, films, and other media. We seek a wide range of critical and cultural perspectives on how bodymind anomalousness features in stories about wrongdoing, from the maimed and scarred villains of Conan Doyle to the neurodivergent hero-sleuths of contemporary popular culture. In what ways have impairment, disfigurement, and disease been used to raise the stakes of fear and upheaval in crime stories? How do such narratives perpetuate or challenge ableist notions of order and resolution? Does corporeal vulnerability stoke our pity, sympathy, or admiration—whether for criminals, victims, or detectives whose genius seems to triumph over adversity? Conversely, do the contours of disability facilitate alternative modes of sleuthing and lead to unexpected forms of justice? What alternate forms of knowledge do these characters and texts present and endorse? Since the genre of crime by definition entails what and how we know, how have authors—over time and around the world—engaged disability to probe the meaning of truth? 

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• Disability as the mark of criminality   

• Disability as a crime—or as damage—that must be redeemed 

• Disability as metaphor for social decay 

• Supercrip crime solvers and criminals 

• Analytical prowess as compensation for physical or emotional loss 

• Neurodivergence and the lonely sleuth 

• Intersectional plots pairing disability with gender, race, class, and sexuality 

• Disability as affective vector: upping the emotional ante 

• Specific impairments as modes of knowing: detection and “cripistemology”   

Submissions should include a proposal of 250–300 words and a brief bio. Proposals due: March 15, 2024. Submit proposals to: Prof. Susannah B. Mintz, Dept. of English, Skidmore College, email: smintz@skidmore.edu, and Prof. Mark Osteen, Dept. of English, Loyola University Maryland, email: MOsteen@loyola.edu. Full manuscripts of 5,000 to 6,500 words based on an accepted proposal will be due in September 2024.

Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900).

In Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900)—believed to be the earliest film featuring The Great Detective—Holmes encounters a burglar in his rooms. Unfortunately, the names of the actors are unknown.

Conan Doyle's "How Watson Learned the Trick."

Arthur Conan Doyle. NYPL

In the Baker Street Almanac, George Mason University law professor and Green Bag editor Ross E. Davies discusses "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1922), a short, humorous dialogue between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in which the good doctor proudly shows off what he has learned of Holmes' methods. It was written by Arthur Conan Doyle as part of a project for Queen Mary. This publication also reproduces the text of the dialogue. (a thanks to the Law & Humanities blog)

Upcoming Grolier Club exhibition: "Key Books in Detective Fiction."

Feminist Press ed.
of The G-String Murders

New York's Grolier Club will open the exhibition "Whodunit? Key Books in Detective Fiction" in November 2023, which will feature significant and unusual mystery works from the collection of Grolier Club member Jeffrey Johnson. Items will include The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens,  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, and The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee (often thought to be ghosted by Craig Rice).

Beijing hosts Sherlock Holmes exhibition.

Sherlock Holmes by
Sidney Paget

China Daily brings word that the National Museum of Classic Books in Beijing is hosting an exhibition on Sherlock Holmes until November 2, including crime scenes from the Holmes canon and a late-19th-century Chinese newspaper that printed Holmes tales translated into Chinese.

New mystery audiobooks from Librivox.

Librivox, which marshals volunteer readers to produce free audiobooks of works in the public domain, has some new mystery-related offerings:

• A Modern Mephistopheles by Louisa May Alcott
  (an Alcott "blood and thunder" tale)
• The Tower Treasure by Frankin W. Dixon (the Hardy Boys debut)
  
• The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (man with an aristocratic title claim is murdered)
  
• The Unholy Three by Tod Robbins (carnival performers become criminals)
  
• Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter's brother is accused of murder)
  
• Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter looks into a potential murder)
  
• The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace (cop and prosecutor chase a dastardly secret society)

Want to volunteer as a reader? Visit this webpage. 

Sherlock Holmes items from Guymon collection at California Antiquarian Book Fair.

Ned Guymon with his
first wife, Ernestine, in 1923.

There will be an exhibition featuring Sherlock Holmes materials from Occidental College's Ned Guymon Collection of Mystery and Detective Fiction during the 55th California International Antiquarian Book Fair on February 10–12, 2023, in Pasadena. The collection is composed of some 16,000 items; one item is an 1887 copy of A Study in Scarlet (also includes Guymon's bookplate).

 There also is a Guymon collection at Bowling Green State University.

A friend of Sherlock Holmes.

Irving Bacheller, from his
1917 passport application

In a blog post, Greenwich [CT] Historical Society curator Christopher Shields discusses the important role of journalist and novelist Irving Bacheller (1859–1950) in introducing Sherlock Holmes and other fictional figures to US readers.

"Sherlock Holmes: The Exhibition" in Minnesota.

On view at the Minnesota History Center until April 2, 2023 is the interactive "Sherlock Holmes: The Exhibition," which encompasses forensic science elements that assisted Holmes in solving crimes, the Victorian milieu, and objects from the University of Minnesota's extensive Sherlock Holmes Collections. In connection with the exhibition is the Minnesota Mystery Flash Fiction Contest (submission deadline December 15, 2022).