Poe, other content at upcoming Amer Literature Assn mtg.

Edgar Allan Poe, 1848.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photos Div.

The American Literature Assn conference will take place at Chicago's Palmer House on May 20–23, 2026. Mystery fans may be interested in the following papers:

The Novel: Formal and Ethical Considerations (May 21)
• “Spectacular Violence, Speculative Truth: JFK, Conspiracy Culture, and Birth of the True Crime
Novel,” Pinar Tasdemir, Univ of Wisconsin–Madison

Religion in Contemporary American Fiction (May 21)
• “Late Thomas Pynchon: Detective Fiction and the Inner Life,” Luke Ferretter, Baylor Univ 

Reassessments, Secrets, and Revelations (May 21)
• “Revealing the Secrets of Rawson’s Magical Mysteries,” Neil Tobin, Independent Scholar 

An American Tragedy: A New Musical based on Theodore Dreiser’s Novel (May 21) 

Pairing Poe in the Classroom (May 22)
Chair: Philip Edward Phillips, Middle Tennessee State Univ
• “Seeing and Seaing Wrong: Poe, Melville, and Interpretive Failure at Sea,” Sam Gleason, Pellissippi State Community College
• “Teaching the Abyss of Justification: Poe, Ngũgĩ, and the Collapse of Oppressive Rationalizations," Juliet Tawiah, Northern Illinois Univ
• “Poe and Poe AI: Calculating Fictions and the Philosophy of Artificial Composition," Craig Carey, Univ of Southern Mississippi

Postwar Consumerism and Consumption (May 22)
• “The Rise of the Working-Class Cop in the Novels of Ed McBain,” Joseph George, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State Univ

The Gothic's Successor Genres (May 22)
• "'Deep Red Bells': Shallow Graves and Uneven Development in True Crime's South," Jennie Lightweis-Goff
• "Gritty Gothic Noir: The Evolution of the Southern Gothic in Michael Farris Smith," Peter Ingrao
(Univ of Texas at Dallas)

Literary Movements after Poe (May 22)
Chair: Margarida Vale de Gato, Universidade de Lisboa
• “The Fall of the House of Nowak: Esmé Weijun Wang's Revision of Edgar Allan Poe," Andy Harper, St. Louis Univ
• “Rosa Arciniega's Descent into Poe's Maelstrom," Micah K. Donohue, Eastern New Mexico Univ
• “Cannibalizing Poe: The 'Pure Potential' of White Monstrosity in Edgar Allan Poe and Mónica Ojeda," Noah Reed Miranda, Smittcamp Family Honors College at California State Univ (Fresno) 

Don DeLillo and the Canon of Literature (May 22)
Chair: Jesse Kavadlo, Maryville Univ
• "Doubling Dostoevsky: DeLillo's 'Midnight in Dostoevsky,’" Mark Osteen, Loyola Univ Maryland
• "‘Two Days Wrong!:' DeLillo's Textures of Time," Crystal Alberts, Univ of North Dakota
• “Owning Narrative in DeLillo and Eco,” Michael Streit, Independent Scholar
• “He Writes in Your Voice, American: DeLillo and Some Paradoxes of the Great American Novel” 

Policed Bodies and Minds in American Literature (May 23)
• “An Irresistible and Uncontrollable Impulse’: The Legal Context for Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Imp of the Perverse,’” Rene H. Treviño, California State Univ

Clues 44.1: Indian crime fiction, French, Haycraft, James, Nancy Drew, Palahniuk, Penny, Rawson, and more.

Clues vol. 44, no. 1 (2026) has been published. See below for abstracts. For a subscription, contact McFarland. 

Update, 19 Jun 2026: Nook and Google Play versions are now available.

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 (Monash Univ) AND FABRICIO TOCCO (Australian National 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.

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)

When Rex Stout met John le Carré.

The Spy Writes blog discusses the interview of John le Carré by Rex Stout for Mademoiselle's July 1964 mystery issue. Stout calls le Carré "unobtrusively handsome" and covers le Carré's revision process; le Carré thinks his own strongest quality is his "critical faculty" (61).

Bonuses for Nancy Drew and Patricia Moyes fans: There's a piece on the girl sleuth plus Moyes's novel Falling Star in the issue. Also, pp. 62–63 features a photo that includes Edgar awardees of that year and other MWA members. Among the luminaries, one can spot Clayton Rawson, Hillary Waugh, and Lawrence Treat in the back; Stout and Dorothy Salisbury Davis in the middle; Howard Haycraft in the front row at left; and Phyllis Whitney in the front row at right.

Haycraft-Queen: More titles back in print.

Welcome developments in reprints of titles on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list (those mysteries deemed essential by Howard Haycraft and Ellery Queen):

• Arcturus Crime Classics has reprinted Helen McCloy's Through a Glass, Darkly and Francis Iles's Before the Fact

• Bello (an imprint of Macmillan) has reissued Roy Vickers's The Department of Dead Ends

• Felony & Mayhem has reprinted Edmund Crispin's The Moving Toyshop

• Ramble House has an edition of Harvey J. O'Higgins's Detective Duff Unravels It

• Titan Books has reissued Sax Rohmer's The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu

• There are new ebook versions of Charlotte Armstrong's The Unsuspected (1947 film available on DVD as well) and Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat

Note that there was a 2011 edition of Helen Eustis's The Horizontal Man in ImPress's Best Mysteries of All Time series, but this is an abridged version, and I believe this series is available only by subscription.

And to recap previous HQ reissues:
• Rue Morgue Press's new editions of Manning Coles's Pray Silence (US title: A Toast to Tomorrow) and John Dickson Carr's The Judas Window and The Crooked Hinge

• Blue Dolphin Publishing's reissue of H. F. Heard's A Taste for Honey

Haycraft-Queen Out-of-Print Titles in the United States (compiled and revised by Elizabeth Foxwell)

Anderson Frederick Irving - The Book of Murder - 1930
Bailey H. C. - The Red Castle - 1932
Benson G. R. - Tracks in the Snow - 1906
Charteris Leslie [Leslie Charles Bowyer Yin] - Meet the Tiger - 1928
Coates Robert M. - Wisteria Cottage - 1948
Cole G. D. H. [G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole] - The Brooklyn Murders - 1923 
Dane Clemence [Winifred Ashton] and Helen Simpson - Re-enter Sir John - 1932
Davis Dorothy Salisbury - A Gentle Murderer - 1951
De la Torre Lillian [Lillian McCue] - Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector - 1946
Dickson Carter [John Dickson Carr] - Lord of the Sorcerers - 1946
Dunsany Lord - The Little Tales of Smethers - 1952
Eberhart Mignon G. - The Patient in Room 18 - 1929
Ellin Stanley - Dreadful Summit - 1948
Eustis Helen - The Horizontal Man - 1946
Frome David [Zenith Jones Brown] - The Hammersmith Murders - 1930
Gardner Erle Stanley - The Case of the Sulky Girl - 1933
Halsey Harlan Page - Old Sleuth, the Detective - 1872
Hammett Dashiell - The Adventures of Sam Spade - 1944
Hart Frances Noyes - The Bellamy Trial - 1927
Hughes Dorothy B. - The So Blue Marble - 1940
King Rufus - Murder by the Clock - 1929
Lawrence Hilda - Blood Upon the Snow - 1944
Lipsky Eleazar - The People Against O’Hara - 1950
Lockridge Frances and Richard Lockridge - The Norths Meet Murder - 1940
Lustgarten Edgar - A Case to Answer - 1947
MacDonald Philip - The Rasp - 1924
MacDonald Philip - The Nursemaid Who Disappeared [aka Warrant for X] - 1938
MacHarg William and Edwin Balmer - The Achievements of Luther Trant - 1910
Marquand John P. - No Hero - 1935
Paul Elliot - The Mysterious Mickey Finn - 1939
Piper Evelyn [Merriam Modell] - The Motive - 1950
Rhode John - The Murders in Praed Street - 1928
Rhode John - The Paddington Mystery - 1925
Rice Craig - Trial by Fury - 1941
Ross Barnaby [Ellery Queen] - The Tragedy of Y - 1932
Seeley Mabel - The Listening House - 1938
Stribling T. S. - Clues of the Caribbees - 1929
Trevor Glen [James Hilton] - Murder at School [aka Was It Murder?] - 1931
Van Dine S. S. [Willard Huntington Wright] - The Benson Murder Case - 1926
Walling R. A. J. - The Fatal Five Minutes - 1932
Walsh Thomas - Nightmare in Manhattan - 1950
Waters [William Russell] - Recollections of a Detective Police Officer - 1856
Wells Carolyn - The Clue - 1909