Restored 1954 recording of Ngaio Marsh.

Ngaio Marsh companion (2019)
published by McFarland

In a restored recording from 1954, Ngaio Marsh speaks about her first novel, A Man Lay Dead (1934); relates her "odd" (in her view) process of writing detective fiction; and provides her eyewitness account of the eventful inauguration of E. C. Bentley as Detection Club president in 1936 with Dorothy L. Sayers and John Rhode, among others. "I screamed," notes Marsh. Other topics include her involvement in theater in New Zealand. (Read about the recording's restoration process.)

Clues 35.2 published: Bentley, Charteris, Christie, Hammett, Melville, et al.

Clues 35.2 (2017) has been published; abstracts follow below. In addition to the print version (which can be ordered from McFarland), the issue is available on Kindle,  Google Play, and Nook.

Introduction: In Conversation
Janice M. Allan (University of Salford)
The executive editor of Clues discusses the contents of the issue, including analyses of works by E. C. Bentley, Benjamin Black, Andrea Camilleri, Leslie Charteris, Agatha Christie, Tana French, Dashiell Hammett, and Herman Melville, and the TV series True Detective.

“The Impotence of Human Reason”:
E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case and the Antidetective Text 
Nathan Ashman (University of Surrey)
This article considers the subversion of the analytical detective format in E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case (1913). Exploring the text’s problematization of concepts such as logic and reason as well as its disruption of the detective’s ocularcentric interpretative framework, the author highlights the ways in which Trent’s Last Case unsettles delineations between the classic analytic detective story and the metaphysical or antidetective text.

Watchful Eyes and Smiling Masks in The Maltese Falcon 
Nils Clausson
This article calls attention to the more than 250 references to eyes and their pervasive role in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, arguing that the novel portrays a world in which trying to see past duplicity, dissimulation, and role playing of others, while seeking to hide one’s own, is pervasive.

Labyrinths of Uncertainty:
True Detective and the Metaphysics of Investigation
Paul Sheehan and Lauren Alice (Macquarie University)
This article outlines some of the salient features and ad hoc history of metaphysical detective fiction (MPDF). Using True Detective season 1 as a case study, it explores how the series takes advantage of new programming freedoms to dramatize MPDF for a “broadcast literature” audience.

“A wholly other world of things, hidden”:
Benjamin Black’s and Tana French’s Criminal Worlds 
Kersti Tarien Powell (Saint Joseph's University)
This essay examines the recent success of Irish crime fiction through the works of Tana French and John Banville/Benjamin Black. Whereas the classic detective novel seeks to narrow multiple possibilities down to one determinate solution, French and Black resist this narrative pattern. In so doing, their novels both reclaim and reinvent the Irish literary tradition.

Crime Stories and Urban Fantasy
Stefan Ekman (University of Gothenburg)
Among the many unexplored areas of urban fantasy is its relation to crime fiction. This article explores how features of the crime story are used to emphasize, reinforce, or introduce urban fantasy’s social commentary. It looks at the genres’ relationship, analyzing three urban fantasies and their respective crime fiction elements.

Camilleri’s Montalbano: Aging, Nostalgia, and the Midlife Crisis
Stephen Derek Kolsky (University of Melbourne)
Salvo Montalbano, the protagonist of Andrea Camilleri’s detective series, goes through a midlife crisis that creates a biographical and ideological line of separation between the earlier and later novels, resulting in a new emphasis on the personal in the form of fleeting passionate engagements and less on social commitment.

Frances Chesterton, wife of G. K.

Stephanie A. Mann provides some insights on poet-playwright Frances Chesterton, wife of G. K. and niece of art historian Mary Margaret Heaton, and mentions the 2015 biography by Nancy Carpentier Brown, The Woman Who Was Chesterton. Brown blogs on Frances Chesterton here. Both writers paint a touching picture of a devoted couple. According to the 13 Dec. 1938 New York Times, G. K. regarded Frances as "in all ways a kindred spirit," and longtime G. K. friend E. C. Bentley (Trent's Last Case) called her G. K.'s "right-hand in all his dealings with the world" (qtd in Brown).

Of related interest: Frances Chesterton being mistaken for The Lodger author Marie Belloc Lowndes and her response: "I am quite willing to feel honored by [the] mistake, but they [Hilaire Belloc and Marie Belloc Lowndes] might feel aggrieved." Belloc (brother of Marie Belloc Lowndes) and G. K. Chesterton were close friends.

Trent's Last Case on Why I Really Like This Bk.

E. C. Bentley, from
The Bookman (1913)

The latest episode of Kate Macdonald's podcast Why I Really Like This Book is on E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913), which Macdonald calls "a cracking good mystery." Macdonald is the author of the John Buchan companion in the series I edit for McFarland.

Chesterton, Greene, et al: Bloomsbury auction results.

E. C. Bentley, from
The Bookman 37 (1913)

There was a mixed bag of results for the Jan 12th Bloomsbury bibliophile auction, although it seems that works by Graham Greene continue to do respectably at auction. The mystery-related items included the following:

• Strand magazine vols 1–16, 1891–98, which contain the Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (illust. Sidney Paget): £100 (approx. US$153).

• E. C. Bentley, Trent's Last Case (1913), with G. K. Chesterton's The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) and some Agatha Christie works, £110 (approx. US$168).

• Raymond Chandler, 1st English ed. of The Big Sleep (1939), £260 (approx. US$400).

• G. K. Chesterton, 1st ed. of The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), £60 (approx. US$92).

• Graham Greene, 1st ed. of The Third Man and The Fallen Idol (1950), £240 (approx. US$368).
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

The Times' recommended mysteries, 1936.

Eden Phillpotts, NYPL

"So prolific are our masters of mystery and detection," wrote the Times of London on July 24, 1936, "that it is only possible to make a brief selection from their latest contributions" (9). Here is what was recommended:

• Margery Allingham, Flowers for the Judge

• E. C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen, Trent's Own Case

• Thomas Burke, Murder at Elstree. "makes our flesh creep."

• Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders; Murder in Mesopotamia

• G. Belton Cobb, No Alibi

• Freeman Wills Crofts, The Loss of the "Jane Vosper"

• [Margaret] Leonora Eyles, They Wanted Him Dead. Eyles was married to D. M. Murray, editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

• R. Austin Freeman, The Penrose Mystery 

• Georgette Heyer, Behold, Here's Poison

• Charles J. Kenny [Erle Stanley Gardner], This Is Murder

• L[eonard]. A[rthur]. Pavey, Forward from Youth. Summary from the London Mercury, 34 (1936): "Brian Ferrands, a victim of shell-shock, is found lying dead of exposure. His friend, Denis Wantage, is induced to search into the dead man's past to find the true reason for his suicide." Pavey was a World War I veteran.

• Eden Phillpotts, A Close Call

• Edward Shanks, Old King Cole. "an unusual 'thriller.'" Mystery author Martin Edwards is distantly connected to Shanks by marriage.

Unlikely Mystery Fan #3: Robert Graves.

Part of a series on unexpected individuals who enjoy or enjoyed mystery-related works and authors.

Poet-author Robert Graves (I, Claudius; Good-bye to All That, etc.), wrote "After a Century, Will Anyone Care Whodunit?", which appeared in the August 15, 1957, New York Times.  In it, Graves prognosticated on which 20th-century "crime-and-detection thriller" authors will be taught in the 21st century, with quite emphatic likes and dislikes.

The mystery writers he liked:

• Erle Stanley Gardner. "As a former practicing attorney he can be trusted not to cheat . . . the legal situation is always novel and fascinating."

• Dashiell Hammett, "The Cleansing of Personville"/Red Harvest. "He writes a good practical English."

• Selwyn Jepson (author of Man Running, adapted by Hitchcock as Stage Fright, 1950, and uncle of writer Fay Weldon). "A refreshing exception."

• Georges Simenon. "a law to himself . . . his diversity and brilliance put most of his rivals to shame."

The mystery writers he dissed:

• E. C. Bentley. "flat-footed."

• Raymond Chandler. "...I would succumb more often to his ingenious impostures, if the style were not so sadly meretricious..."

• G. K. Chesterton. "self-satisfied criminologist . . .a jolly Catholic priest."

• Agatha Christie. "... nobody could promise Agatha immortality as a novelist." (never mind that Christie dedicated a book to him) 

• Edgar Allan Poe. "...Heaven knows why nobody in Paris caught sight of the ape [from "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"] during all that excitement, though it was wandering paw-loose for days and must have felt pretty hungry and thirsty."

• Dorothy L. Sayers.  "Dorothy Sayers . . . will . . . sink without a trace; she clearly has no belief in her outrageous drawing-room charades..."

Graves's crystal ball seems to have been cloudy, given how seriously he missed the mark on Chandler, Christie, and Sayers, and Jepson is hardly a household name in the present day.

G. K. Chesterton and Notre Dame.

The exhibition "The Story of Notre Dame" includes a section on G. K. Chesterton, including:

• an account of his lectures there in fall 1930: "... there was the man himself, nearly three hundred pounds of him, who, thinking of some delicious aside, would start to chuckle and so convulse the audience before he had said what he had to say, that they were in a constant state of good nature. "

• a faculty admission card to Chesterton's Notre Dame lectures, which reveals that he spoke on history on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays; and on literature on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

• online text of the 1912 Chesterton Day by Day, which features Chesterton quotes organized by days of the year. For example, the entry for January 31 is from The Defendant: "The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, the Odyssey because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle."

• online text of Greybeards at Play: Literature and Art for Old Gentlemen, written and illustrated by Chesterton (note the dedication to "E.C.B.," who is Chesterton's old friend, mystery writer E. C. Bentley)

About the image: Cigarette card of G. K. Chesterton, NYPL