Ava Dickerson on the papers of Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels/Barbara Mertz.

An episode of the podcast Another Shirt Ruined (focusing on Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Emerson series) features Ava Dickerson, an archivist at IU Bloomington's Lilly Library, who catalogued the papers of Peters (aka Barbara Michaels and Barbara Mertz). Learn about aspects of the collection, some fans who wrote to Peters, challenges in cataloguing, and more. 

Further Reading: Ava Dickerson, "Journey to the Center of the Mertz" (blog posts). 

Remembering the founding of Malice Domestic.

Barbara Mertz, by Sue Feder

My friend Dean James (aka Miranda James) and I were invited by Dr. Elizabeth Mertz (daughter of Barbara Mertz/Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters) to reminisce about the founding of the Malice Domestic convention in which her mother played such an integral role.  It's presented in two parts: Part 1, Part 2.

Ten Years of The Bunburyist.

Elizabeth Foxwell in an investigative mode.

It's hard to believe that 10 years ago today, I clicked the "Publish" button, and this blog began. I thought a blog could provide visitors with a way to learn about the contents of Clues: A Journal of Detection; read about neglected mystery works; and find links to interesting aspects involving the history of mystery, detective, and crime fiction—especially vintage audio and video. Although I tend not to receive a lot of comments, people seem to like what they see. Statistics indicate that the blog receives more than 5000 hits a month and has 59 loyal followers.

Sadly I have needed to reduce the number of posts per month because of my publishing and job commitments, as well as the work entailed for my new blog on American women in World War I.

The following are the top 10 posts of The Bunburyist based on views. Do you have other favorites?

The Top 10 Posts on The Bunburyist, 2005–15:

10. "Fri Forgotten Books: Charlotte Armstrong's The Chocolate Cobweb (1948)"

9. "Clues 31.2: Collins, Harvey, Highsmith, Parker, South African and Spanish crime fiction"

8. "Cornerstone: The Horizontal Man, by Helen Eustis"

7. "Fri Forgotten Books: The Mystery of Central Park, by Nellie Bly (1889)." After I posted about this rare book and mentioned it on a women's studies listserve, the Library of Congress digitized its copy and made it available via the Internet Archive.

6. "A Jury of Her Peers" (on the first U.S. female jurors)

5. "Dr. Barbara Mertz, Trailblazer"

4. "The Dude Abides: The Big Lebowski and The Big Sleep"

3.  "Cornerstone: Re-Enter Sir John (1932)"

2. "'The Grave Grass Quivers,' by MacKinlay Kantor (1931)"

1. "Dozen Best Detective Stories Ever Written"

Dr. Barbara Mertz, trailblazer.

Barbara Mertz, right, with Charlotte MacLeod, 1989
Photo by Elizabeth Foxwell

It is impossible to grasp that the ebullient Barbara Mertz, aka MWA Grand Master Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels, has left us at age 85. I first met her when I interviewed her for a University of Maryland journalism class. After 2 hours I emerged, somewhat dazedly (a typical state of affairs in Mertzdom), with a 17-page, single-spaced transcript and a friendship that would endure for nearly 30 years. To her I owe a great deal, not least my career in mystery and—like many other writers—warm memories of her encouragement, support, and singular presence.

Barbara's storming of considerable bastions in her life and career has benefited women from many walks of life as well as mystery readers and writers. When she was a graduate student in Egyptology at the University of Chicago, she was asked, more than once, why she was taking the place of a man, and why was she there anyway, because she was "just going to get married." She was divorced at a time when single parents were regarded as strange creatures, and she worked hard to support two children by publishing a minimum of two books per year and reviewing books. Well into her seventies, Barbara was descending into Egyptian tombs and maintaining a schedule that would make someone a quarter of her age relapse onto a Victorian fainting couch. Always embroiled in some offbeat enterprise, she once took me with her to purchase a cowboy hat, because she was embarking on a tour with Sharyn McCrumb and Joan Hess that would feature their country-music song stylings.

Given today's popularity of intrepid Victorian archaeologist Amelia Peabody Emerson and her inimitable spouse and son, as well as Barbara's Agatha Award for the Jacqueline Kirby novel Naked Once More, it is easy to forget that she had to fight to write humorous mysteries. Unease existed in the publishing world about reader receptivity to humor, and she had to adopt the Peters pseudonym for these books while maintaining the Michaels pen name for her twists on the Gothic novel. She created a stir with Borrower of the Night when art-historian heroine Vicky Bliss ditched two handsome men for a more attractive new job.

Happy 80th birthday, Barbara Mertz.

MWA Grand Master Barbara Mertz, aka Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, turns 80 today. She published her first novel, The Master of Blacktower, in 1966, and it should be noted that long before the recent flurry of vampire novels, the Michaels novel The Dark on the Other Side (1970) dealt with an emotional vampire and can be read as a horror work (one friend told me that she had to turn on all the lights in her house after she read it—the greatest compliment to an author).

It also should be noted that Mertz, initially working in a publishing climate oriented to formulaic romantic suspense, struggled with her skeptical publishers to write the humorous mysteries with intelligent heroines that she was certain readers would enjoy. Many mystery authors who came after her owe a considerable debt to her persistence. Her redoubtable archaeologist Amelia Peabody Emerson first appeared in the H. Rider Haggard-inspired Crocodile on the Sandbank (1975); other series heroines include Mertz alter ego Jacqueline Kirby (debuted in The Seventh Sinner, 1972) and statuesque art historian Vicky Bliss (debuted in Borrower of the Night, 1973. Mertz is currently working on another Bliss book that will follow Night Train to Memphis. Night Train, a Peters book, features one of the funniest blurbs in blurbing history, written by one Barbara Michaels.)

Mertz's nonfiction Egyptology books Red Land, Black Land and Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs are mainstays of undergraduate Egyptology courses—indeed, a revised edition of Temples will be issued by Morrow in December. She endowed a scholarship for mystery writing at Hood College in Maryland.

Go here to see a Webcast of a 2003 Mertz talk at the Library of Congress.

The last word belongs to Robert Barnard at the first Malice Domestic in 1989: "What can you say about Elizabeth Peters that she hasn't already said?"

Photo credit: Dennis Forbes