Clues 41.2: Chilean detective fiction, Connelly, Johnson, Penny, Teaching Forum on Crime Fiction and Creative Writing.

Clues 41.2 (2023) has been published (abstracts below). For a print issue or a subscription, contact McFarland.
• Ebooks available (Kindle, Nook, Google Play).

Introduction: “The Warp and Woof of Every Moment”
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center)
The executive editor of Clues provides an overview of the issue, including articles on Chilean crime fiction, on Batman, and on detective fiction and philosophy;a Teaching Forum on the relationship of crime fiction and creative writing; and articles on authors Sherman Alexie, Michael Connelly, Craig Johnson, Kevin Major, and Louise Penny.

Spotlight on... Detective Fiction in Chile: Developments in the Genre

KATE M. QUINN (Univ of Galway, Ireland)
This article discusses the consolidation in the 1990s of Chile’s neopolicial works that combine hard-boiled and political elements, reassesses earlier twentieth- century genre writers, and examines the wider diversity of production up to the present day. It considers the conditions of genre production in Chile and the challenge of wider access to international readers.

“Still harping on daughters”: Maddie in Michael Connelly’s Hieronymus Bosch Series
HEATHER DUBROW (Fordham Univ)
In Michael Connelly’s books about detective Hieronymus Bosch, Bosch’s daughter Maddie is closely connected to many preoccupations of the series even when a seemingly minor presence. Romance texts such as Arthurian narratives and Spenser’s Faerie Queene are the best keys to interpreting Maddie’s roles in the series and larger questions about crime fiction.

From Alexie’s Indian Killer to Johnson’s Longmire Series: Expanding the Landscape of the American Indian Detective Novel
ELIZABETH ABELE (Gulf Univ for Science & Technology, Kuwait)
The essay examines Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer, a crime novel that critiques Native American culture mediated through White American commerce, authors, and academics, as well as Craig Johnson’s Longmire series as a development and a departure from American Indian crime fiction in the late-twentieth century.

“Not everything buried is actually dead”:
The Detective as Historian in Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (2010)
AOILEANN NÍ ÉIGEARTAIGH (Dundalk Inst of Technology, Ireland)
Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (2010) inserts a Francophone detective into the heart of English culture in Québec, facilitating an investigation of historical Québécois tensions between the communities. Inspector Gamache’s resolution of the case suggests that acknowledging these cultural differences and finding a way to compromise are characteristics that continue to distinguish contemporary Canadian society. 

Sunset Tourism in Kevin Major’s One for the Rock, Two for the Tablelands, and Three for Trinity: Travel and Identity in Three Newfoundland and Labrador Crime Novels
TOM HALFORD (Memorial Univ of Newfoundland, Canada)
This essay considers the complex relationship among crime fiction, tourism, and identity in One for the Rock, Two for the Tablelands, and Three for Trinity by Kevin Major, which are set in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Major flirts with the concept of dark tourism as he takes readers into sites of loss and trauma but ultimately is more invested in highlighting and preserving aspects of provincial identity.

Clues 37.1: Canadian Detective Fiction, Nancy Drew, Shelley, Trauma, Dementia, and More.

Volume 37, no. 1 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published, which can be purchased from McFarland & Co. (Cree-French Canadian author Wayne Arthurson is on the cover). The abstracts for the issue follow below.

Ebook versions available: Google Play, Nook, Kindle

Introduction / JANICE M. ALLAN (Univ of Salford) The executive editor of Clues discusses the contents of Clues vol. 37, no. 1, including articles on dementia in detective fiction, a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem viewed as a detective story, Wayne Arthurson, Giles Blunt, Gail Bowen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Laurie R. King, Nancy Drew, Ron Rash, Rene Saldana Jr., and Peter Temple.

The Sign of the Four and the Detective as a Disrupter of Order / NATHANAEL T. BOOTH (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China). Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four (1890) often is read in the context of British imperialism and bourgeois rationality, which stresses the problematic nature of Sherlock Holmes’s activity as a detective. Separated from its imperialist context, the novel shows a Holmes who unsettles (rather than restores) social order.

“I ain’t going to the jailhouse if I can help it”: The Thriller Impulse in Ron Rash’s One Foot in Eden / JIM COBY (University of Alabama in Huntsville). This essay examines how the contemporary Appalachian writer Ron Rash employs the tropes of mystery thrillers—tropes largely ignored in southern fiction—in his novel One Foot in Eden (2002), as he grapples with an increasingly urbanized Appalachia.

René Saldaña Jr.’s Innovations of Children’s Detective Fiction in the Mickey Rangel Series / AMY CUMMINS (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley). René Saldaña Jr.’s Mickey Rangel series (Arte Público, 2009–18) both fulfills and rewrites the conventions of children’s detective fiction. On the south Texas border of the United States, fifth-grade detective Mickey solves cases while facing social problems and unanswered questions, aided by a mysterious Angel as his secret sidekick.

Trauma and Contemporary Crime Fiction / MARY ANN GILLIES (Simon Fraser University, Canada). This article explores the role of trauma in contemporary crime novels by Laurie R. King and Peter Temple. It argues that, as understandings of what constitutes trauma have shifted over the last century, crime fiction has adapted as well, representing trauma in sophisticated and complex ways and, in so doing, mirroring the contemporary preoccupation with it.

The Case of the Missing Memory: Dementia and the Fictional Detective / MARLA HARRIS. This essay explores the challenges of creating a detective with dementia in Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind (2005), Adele LaPlante’s Turn of Mind (2011) and Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing (2014). As these metaphysical narratives feature paradoxes of identity, they can help destigmatize this devastating condition.

CBC's "100 Novels That Make You Proud to Be Canadian."

CBC Books (of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) has issued its list of "100 Novels That Make You Proud to Be Canadian," which includes the following mystery works:

• Linwood Barclay,
No Time for Goodbye
• Giles Blunt, Forty Words for Sorrow 
• Will Ferguson, 419
• Louise Penny, Still Life
• Andrew Pyper, Lost Girls

Mysteries in March on CBC Radio (Canada).

The CBC Radio program The Next Chapter is focusing on mysteries this month, including quizzes and recommended reading lists (the latter featuring writers such as Gail Bowen).

Hardy Boys author Leslie McFarlane recalled.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. remembers the death on September 6, 1977, of highly successful Canadian author Leslie McFarlane with this 1972 interview; he wrote some of the Hardy Boys and the Dana Girls mysteries, among other works.

Below: Target Berlin (1944), with a script by Leslie McFarlane.

Canada Literary Tour: No mystery.

Grant Allen

I must confess to irritation that "Canada: A Literary Tour" on the Library and Archives Canada Web site has absolutely no mention of Canadian mystery contributions to its literary landscape. Not even Grant Allen (b. in Kingston, Ontario, in 1848)—grandson of the fifth Baron Longueuil (the only Canadian barony), friend of Arthur Conan Doyle, and creator of some of the earliest female fictional detectives (Lois Cayley, Hilda Wade). Surely multiaward-winning Louise Penny contributes substantially to a rendering of Quebec?

Brock University has a great Crime Fiction Canada resource. Perhaps the Crime Writers of Canada will compile their own mystery map of Canada.

Jose Latour, Gail Bowen, Peter Robinson on CBC Radio.

Recently on CBC Radio's The Next Chapter, Cuban expatriate Jose Latour talked about his thriller Crime of Fashion, Gail Bowen discussed her new novel The Brutal Heart, and Peter Robinson addressed questions such as "What's your greatest fear?", "Who is your favorite hero of fiction?," and "Who are your favorite writers?" (It looks like the March 21st program with Agatha winner Louise Penny won't be available until March 28th).