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"

The Dude abides: The Big Lebowski and The Big Sleep.

There's been a flurry of recent publicity for The Year in Lebowski Studies that features essays on the Coen Brothers' 1998 film The Big Lebowski, which has distinct parallels to Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. To wit:

• Michael Dirda's Washington Post review here.

• Indiana University's piece on the coeditor, IU English professor Ed Comentale, here.

• University of Louisville piece on its contributors here.
  

• New York Times blog post here.

• WFIU Artworks piece here.
  

We at Clues previously got into the act in issue 26.3 with Anthony Hoefer's "'Like tumbleweed drifting across a vacant lot': The Mythic Landscape of Los Angeles in Chandler's The Big Sleep and the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski." In addition, Kate Camp on Radio New Zealand discusses Chandler's book here in the program Kate's Klassics.

Clues 26.3: M.E. Braddon, Coen brothers, Anne Perry, Robert Skinner, et al.

Vol. 26., no. 3 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published, featuring articles on Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, the Victorian female sleuth, Anne Perry's Highgate Rise, Chandler's The Big Sleep and the Coen brothers' Big Lebowski, Robert Skinner's New Orleans sleuth passing as a white man, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind and its reflections on Francoism. Go here for the table of contents and article abstracts; go here for further information on the journal.