New Clues CFP: Mid-twentieth-century American women crime writers.

There is a new call for papers for a Clues: A Journal of Detection theme issue on the work of mid–twentieth-century American female crime writers. The guest editors are Erin A. Smith (University of Texas at Dallas) and Clare Rolens (Palomar College). Proposals are due 15 January 2027, with full essays of 5,000 to 6,000 words due 1 August 2027. 

The other sides of Dorothy B. Hughes.

Mystery fans may know of Dorothy B. Hughes' considerable work as a critic and distinguished career as a novelist and biographer (e.g., In a Lonely Place; Ride the Pink Horse; Edgar nominations for The Expendable Man and a book on Erle Stanley Gardner), but I was intrigued to learn of her poetry (published under her maiden name, Dorothy Belle Flanagan).

I've updated Hughes' Wikipedia page with information on the poems I have found, short stories, and other works. Perhaps most intriguing is her mystery serial, "The Turquoise Ring Murders," that was broadcast on a New Mexico radio station in October 1933.

Upcoming classic thrillers, Library of America.

On January 3, the Library of America announced some of its fall 2023 releases, which included the following:

(1) Five Classic Thrillers 1961–1964 (The Murderers by Fredric Brown, The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, Dead Calm by Charles Williams, The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, The Score by Richard Stark [Donald Westlake])

(2) Four Classic Thrillers 1964–1969 (The Fiend by Margaret Millar, Doll by Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], Run Man Run by Chester Himes, The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith)

Below are some critics' reactions to the works in these volumes.

Re Brown's The Murderers: Sgt. Cuff [John Winterich] in 30 Sept. 1961 Saturday Review dubbed it "highly amative."

Re Highsmith's Tremor of Forgery: Terrence Rafferty in the 4 Jan. 1988 New Yorker dubbed the book "nihilistic."

Re Himes's Run Man Run: Sgt. Cuff in the 31 Dec. 1966 Saturday Review regarded this as a "[t]aut, devilish, ably-written slice of life—and death."

Re Hughes's Expendable Man (Edgar nominee, Best Novel): Kirkus lauded its "savage momentum."

Re Marlowe's The Name of the Game Is Death: Anthony Boucher in the 11 Feb 1962 New York Times believed that Marlowe had reached "an impressive new high."

Reading group on Caspary, Highsmith, Hughes, Millar.

Edgar nominee Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY) will be facilitating a Zoom reading group from late September to December for the Center for Fiction on "Women Crime Fiction Writers of the 1940s and '50s."  Books covered will be Laura by Vera Caspary, Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, and Beast in View by Margaret Millar.

Dorothy B. Hughes's classic mystery library.

Claude Rains and Edward Norris in They Won't Forget (1937),
adaptation of Ward Greene's Death in the Deep South

In the 13 Nov 1977 Los Angeles Times, author-critic Dorothy B. Hughes made 23 selections for a classic mystery library. Hughes defined a classic as "a book to which you return over and again ... primarily because for you it satisfies a hunger for the felicity of beauty and craft..."(N3). For Hughes, "style is the most important element in any mystery, let alone a classic" (N3).

Hughes did not include any works by Arthur Conan Doyle and Erle Stanley Gardner (although Hughes would publish a biography of Gardner), explaining that in the case of these and some other authors (such as Ellery Queen), their body of work constitutes the classic rather than a single book. Hughes's choices for her classic mystery library are the following:

• Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios. "a hunt-and-search story with a background of the Near East leading to Paris"
  
• Edgar Box [Gore Vidal], Death in the Fifth Position. " . . . the world of the ballet, presented with perception and verisimilitude"
  
• Vera Caspary, Laura. "an enviable creator of plots which twist and turn and startle."
  
• Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely. "his making of poetry out of the tawdry was indeed something unforgettable"
  
• Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None. "two classic books"
  
• Len Deighton, The Ipcress File. "Deighton . . . devised a new style."
• Helen Eustis, The Horizontal Man. "a true academic background against which the tragicomedy is played."
  
• William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust. "a mystery sensation"
  
• Michael Gilbert, Close Quarters. "he has built a cathedral and its close, and has peopled it with verisimilitude."
  
• Graham Greene, Brighton Rock. "two sad insignificant persons revealed in their small moment of significance."
• Ward Greene, Death in the Deep South. "a classic of the regional and one of the first dealing with ethnic problems"
  
• Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon. "a classic romantic-adventure"
  
• H. F. [Gerald] Heard, A Taste for Honey. "Another of the instant classics"
  
• Francis Iles [Anthony Berkeley Cox], Before the Fact."a book whose plot must remain secret"
  
• Charlotte Jay [Geraldine Halls], Beat Not the Bones. "the primitive culture of Africa in collision with the 20th century"
  
• John le Carre [David Cornwell], The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. "tragic power"
  
• Meyer Levin, Compulsion. "a classic of major proportion"
  
• Marie Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger. " . . . a true crime story, in fiction form"
  
• Ngaio Marsh, Death of a Fool. "breath-taking"
  
• E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Great Impersonation. "a landmark"
  
• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors. "background became not just background, but important"
  
• Josephine Tey [Elizabeth MacKintosh], The Daughter of Time. "Simply written but brilliant in premise and performance."

• 

  Ad for They Won't Forget (from the film pressbook)

  
   

Foxwell on mystery reviewing, EQMM blog.

Today on the EQMM blog "Something Is About to Happen," I discuss "The Not-So-Simple Art of Mystery Reviewing," including a look back at some eminent reviewers (such as Walter R. Brooks, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy B. Hughes, Howard Haycraft, and Anthony Boucher).

Lady of burlesque (and mystery).

Feminist Press notes that a number of independent bookstores are participating in giveaways this month of some of its mystery titles: Gypsy Rose Lee's recently reissued Mother Finds a Body (with a foreword by her son, Erik Lee Preminger) and its predecessor, The G-String Murders; Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place; and Vera Caspary's Laura.

Here is Barbara Stanwyck jitterbugging and performing Russian splits in Lady of Burlesque (film adaptation of The G-String Murders).

McCloy, Moyes, and White reissued.

Among the books just reissued in the Arcturus Crime Classics series:

• MWA Grand Master Helen McCloy, Through a Glass, Darkly (1950). A doppelganger means trouble for a teacher and psychiatrist Basil Willing. The New York Times deemed it one of the best mysteries of 1950. Wrote Dorothy B. Hughes about the book in the Dec. 3, 1950, Washington Post, "Not since the late Bayard Veiller's 'Bait for a Tiger' has this reader been filled with such actual fear by a printed page."

• Patricia Moyes, Who Saw Her Die? (aka Many Deadly Returns, 1970). In this Edgar-nominated novel, Detective Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett must figure out how a widow died.

• Ethel Lina White, Some Must Watch (1933). A killer preys on vulnerable women in this novel by the author of The Lady Vanishes that was adapted as Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase. 

The return of Hughes's The Expendable Man.

Today marks the reissue of Dorothy B. Hughes's Edgar-nominated The Expendable Man (1963) by New York Review of Books Classics; this edition has an afterword by Walter Mosley. In Crime & Mystery, H. R. F. Keating called the book, which centers on the death of a female hitchhiker, "one of the great trick novels of crime fiction." Anthony Boucher thought it "a splendid novel."

Happy birthday, William McGivern.

Janet Leigh and Robert Taylor
in Rogue Cop
(writ. William McGivern, 1954)

William McGivern, best known for The Big Heat (1953), was born today in Chicago in 1922. He served as president of Mystery Writers of America in 1980 and penned some 25 books over the course of his career. His screen credits include films such as the John Wayne cop vehicle Brannigan (1975) and the Lee J. Cobb TV series The Young Lawyers (1970–71). Dorothy B. Hughes considered The Big Heat, which received an Edgar for Best Motion Picture, one of the best mysteries of 1953. McGivern died in 1982.

Update. On Dec. 28, 2011, The Big Heat (dir. Fritz Lang, 1953) was added to the National Film Registry.

U-Chicago's Popular Literature Collection.

Univ of Chicago Library's Special Collections finished an inventory last year of its Popular Literature Collection, which includes about 2000 paperbacks and science fiction magazines, some with lurid

Portrait of Anthony Berkeley Cox
by George Morrow
from Jugged Journalism (1925)

covers. Now, finally, the finding aid is online. Books in the collection include Trial and Error (1945 ed.; film 1941) by Anthony Berkeley [Cox], Death in the Blackout (1946) by Anthony Gilbert, Of Tender Sin (1952) by David Goodis, The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher (1944) by C. W. Grafton (father of Sue), Bimini Run (1952) by E. Howard Hunt (yes, the Watergate figure), Dread Journey (1947) by Dorothy B. Hughes, Wall of Eyes (1943) by Margaret Millar, and She Faded into Air (1941) by Ethel Lina White (best known for The Lady Vanishes). Some covers from the collection are posted here.

Ransom Center on papers of Nicholas Ray.

Ida Lupino in
On Dangerous Ground
(dir. Nicholas Ray, 1952)

In the fall 2011 issue of Ransom Edition UT-Austin's Harry Ransom Center discusses its acquisition of the papers of director Nicholas Ray, including mention of They Live by Night (1949) and In a Lonely Place (1950). It appears that the papers will be ready for access sometime this fall (more on the acquisition here).

Dorothy B. Hughes picks, best mysteries of 1953.

Glenn Ford in
The Big Heat (1953,
dir. Fritz Lang)

Calling 1953 "not ... the best year in mystery writing," author-critic Dorothy B. Hughes selected her favorite mysteries of the year in a December 6, 1953, column for the Washington Post. They were:

• Christianna Brand, Fog of Doubt. "Artful puzzle."

• Leslie Ford, Washington Whispers Murder."Tells, with the bite of intelligent scorn, a terrifying story."

• Max Franklin [Richard Deming], Justice Has No Sword. "This one has the professional touch of a star reporter."

• Michael Gilbert, Fear to Tread. "Another great Michael Gilbert novel."

• Charlotte Jay, Beat Not the Bones. "The first important mystery of the year."

• Ira Levin, A Kiss before Dying. "Another big first, written by a 23-year-old."

• René Masson, Green Oranges. "Masson is one of the great discoveries of this decade."

• William McGivern, The Big Heat. "Today's first-ranking novelist of the hard-hitting mystery."

• Josephine Tey, The Singing Sands. "Her noted blend of detecting excitement and beautiful writing."

Why aren't women writers remembered?

Dorothy B. Hughes,
one author reprinted
by Persephone Books

As Women's History Month begins, Nicola Beauman of Persephone Books (which has reprinted US mystery authors Dorothy B. Hughes and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding) provides a thought-provoking piece on women authors: "...why are a small number of women writers remembered and given a comfortable, settled place in the great tradition while the majority suffer E. V. Thompson's 'enormous condescension of posterity'?"

Literary gatekeeping is a perpetual, much-debated topic. Although it seems to operate more aggressively against women, it also occurs with men. Fitzgerald, for one, was not recognized as a literary craftsman until well after his death. How many pulp writers were considered to be "slumming" in their lifetimes? The mystery genre suffers from the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome (i.e., receives little respect as a literary form worthy of study) and persistent perceptions that women write "fluffier" works, as can be seen in the sneering about the hugely successful Mary Roberts Rinehart. Powerhouses such as Charlotte Armstrong, Vera Caspary, Hughes, Margaret Millar, Ruth Rendell, and others would tend to refute the fluffy notion, but it would be interesting to see how many works by female mystery writers of the past are reprinted versus those by men.

Happy birthday, Feminist Press.

Powell's celebrates the 40th birthday of the nonprofit Feminist Press, which has long reissued neglected works by female authors and other activist writers, with a sale on some of its titles. On the Feminist Press Web site are milestones in its history, including "2003. Femmes Fatales series. Ten great noir classics of the 30s, 40s, and 50s are launched," including Vera Caspary's Laura (1943; film 1944, dir. Otto Preminger), Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place (1947; film 1950, dir. Nicholas Ray), and Evelyn Piper's Bunny Lake Is Missing (1957; film 1965, dir. Otto Preminger. Piper was the pseudonym of Miriam Levant Modell, aka Merriam Modell).

Vol 2 of Johnson's The Dark Page: Books That Inspired American Film Noir.

July's Fine Books and Collections looks at Kevin Johnson's The Dark Page: Books That Inspired American Film Noir, vol. 2 (covering the 1950s). Works mentioned in the piece include Fredric Brown's The Screaming Mimi (1949); Niven Busch's The Furies (1948); Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925); Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place (1947); Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me, Deadly (1952); and Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (1933).

About the image: Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun, dir. George Stevens, 1951; adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

Greatest characters in fiction?

Over on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's First Tuesday Book Club is a request for nominations for the most powerful or moving fictional characters, which is slated as the subject of a future program.

In considering such characters from mystery fiction, one on my list would be the serial killer Dix Steele from Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place (1947). Hughes does a tremendous job in showing the reader how this character became what he was. You may find him chilling, but you do understand him. Are there other nominations from the floor?

In addition, the First Tuesday Book Club has an archived list of recommended reads in crime fiction—not a lot of surprises, methinks, with the possible exception of American Horace McCoy, who is best known for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935), but also was a hardboiled writer of considerable skill.

Clues 26.4 published

Vol. 26, no. 4 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published. A list of the articles and reviews follows below; go here for the article abstracts, or here for more information about the journal.

Investigating Domestic Disorder: Harriet Prescott Spofford's Detectives Karen J. Jacobsen (Valdosta State U, Georgia) The "Test of Feminine Investigation" in Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly of Scotland Yard Stories Ellen Burton Harrington (U of South Alabama) Tijuana the American Town: Images of the Corrupt City in Hammett's "The Golden Horseshoe" J. A. Zumoff (City College of New York) Feline, not Canine: The Rise of the Female Arch-Villain in the 1940s Sherlock Holmes Films from Universal Amanda J. Field (U of Southampton, UK) The Phenomenology of Noir Perception: Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place and Cornell Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man William Brevda (Central Michigan U) REVIEWS Mary W. Tannert and Henry Kratz, eds. and trans. Early German and Austrian Detective Fiction: An Anthology Gundela Hachmann David Geherin. Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction Rachel Schaffer

Erle Stanley Gardner on editors.

"Erle declared that when authors 'temporarily down on their luck' came in steady streams to borrow money, the dog would wag his tail in ecstatic greeting. But the minute an honest-to-God editor came, the dog bit him." --Dorothy B. Hughes, Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case of the Real Perry Mason 185

Happy birthday, Dorothy B. Hughes and
Frances Noyes Hart.

MWA Grand Master Dorothy B. Hughes was born today in 1904, and author Frances Noyes Hart was born today in 1890.
Hughes (seen at left) is known for some legendary noir novels: In a Lonely Place (novel reissued by Feminist Press; film directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart); Ride the Pink Horse (memorably filmed by Robert Montgomery, who also appeared in a 1948 radio production of In a Lonely Place); The Fallen Sparrow (featuring a terrific John Garfield); and The Blackbirder, among others. In a Lonely Place provides a look into the mind of a serial killer, long before the modern spate of such novels, and Hughes skillfully shows the reader how the character became what he is.

A longtime mystery reviewer for the Albuquerque Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers, Hughes died in 1993.

Frances Noyes Hart, a distant connection of Edith Wharton, served as a YMCA canteen worker in France during World War I and wrote three mystery novels, including The Bellamy Trial (1927, "probably ... the greatest mystery story written this century," wrote Herbert Carter in the American Mercury). Released as a film in 1929, The Bellamy Trial was based on New Jersey's Hall-Mills murder case, which also influenced F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Her other novels include the Halloween mystery Hide in the Dark (1929) and The Crooked Lane (1934). She also published a collection of short stories (Contact and Other Stories, 1923). Her story "Contact" won second place in the O Henry Memorial Prize competition in 1920 (other second-place winners were Fitzgerald and Alice Duer Miller). She died in 1943.

Both writers appear on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list: Hughes for her debut novel The So Blue Marble (1940), Hart for The Bellamy Trial. Both are out of print in the United States, although it appears you can still buy a French translation of The Bellamy Trial.