Poe: The ballet.

The Illinois-based Ballet 5:8 has scheduled a national tour of its ballet, "The Curious Life of Edgar Allan Poe," which, as the company describes, "traces Poe's life through the short stories that made him immortal." Its creators are Ballet 5:8 artistic director Julianna Rubio Slager and choreographer Glorielle Niedfeldt. Upcoming cities include Albuquerque (October 2026); Baltimore (October 2026); and South Bend, IN (March 2027). The company's website offers thoughts on Poe's legacy by experts such as Richmond Poe Museum curator Chris Semtner.

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.

Best Part of the Book podcast: Clues: A Journal of Detection.

On McFarland's Best Part of the Book podcast, executive editor Caroline Reitz (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY/CUNY Graduate Center) and I chat with host Mark Perzel about Clues: A Journal of Detection. Topics include the appeal of mysteries, the history of the journal, revelations that first appeared in the journal, and the most recent issue on disability and detective fiction. Those who would like to subscribe to the journal can receive a 25% discount with the coupon code BESTPART (email journals [at] mcfarlandpub.com).

Clues 43.2: Disability and Detective Fiction.

Volume 43, no. 2, of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published—a theme issue on Disability and Detective Fiction, guest edited by Susannah B. Mintz (Skidmore College) and Mark Osteen (Loyola Univ Maryland). See below for the abstracts. Contact McFarland for a copy of the issue or a subscription.

Update, 11 Jan 2026: Kindle version and Nook version available.

Update, 18 Jan 2026: Google Play version available.

Introduction: Disability and Detective Fiction
 / Susannah B. Mintz and Mark Osteen 

“The blindest of the blind”: Blind Men, Beggars, and Murderers in Catherine Crowe’s Crime Fiction / Emily Cline
Catherine Crowe portrays literal and figurative blindness in the proto-detective stories Men and Women (1843), Lilly Dawson (1847), and “The Blind Witness and His Dog” (1849).  Embodied and metaphorical blindness propose competing forms of knowledge, sympathetic and diagnostic, revealing the optocentric biases that limit the Victorian criminal court’s means of detection. 

Seeing Is (Dis)believing: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Classification of Disability in The Trail of the Serpent  / Roshnara Kissoon (Teachers College, Columbia University)
This essay examines the depiction of disability in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent (1860), which features a nonverbal detective protagonist. Braddon’s novel elucidates, and contributes to, a taxonomy of disability that intersects with its nuanced class system, ultimately revealing the limits of both, despite its innovative portrayal. 

Broken Bones: Isolation, Mobility, and Interdependence in Rear Window / Mark Osteen 
This essay demonstrates how the sleuthing of L.B. Jefferies, his girlfriend Lisa, and his nurse Stella metaphorically reassembles Mrs. Thorwald, Rear Window’s murder victim. Jefferies’s disability eventually enables him to recognize not only his but also neighbors’ interdependency and results in his metamorphosis into a more compassionate neighbor and lover. 

“Do you see?”: Disability and “Seeing” Evidence in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon / Darren Gray 
Red Dragon subverts crime fiction’s tropes of the monstrous criminal and extraordinary detective by exploring both disabled and nondisabled viewpoints. Through disfigured and speech-impaired criminal Francis Dolarhyde, investigator Will Graham, and the blind Reba McAllen, Thomas Harris exposes the subjectivity of perception and the impacts of ableism, marginalization, and prejudice. 

Disabilities and Stephen King’s Detectives / Michael J. Blouin (Milligan Univ)
Stephen King has repeatedly returned to characters with disabilities to explore what it means to be human, intersecting with King’s under-examined forays into detective fiction. Although King’s depictions of individuals living with disabilities remain problematic, his bestselling works offer fecund sites for ruminating upon the relationship between disabilities and detective stories. 

NYU event: "Poe in New York City."

Edgar Allan Poe. NYPL

On Nov 22, NYU's School of Law will be hosting the free event "Poe in New York City," followed by a reception. The school hosts the Poe Room, which features artifacts from Edgar Allan Poe's time and an illustrated timeline of his life.

Upcoming Poe exhibition.

Opening on November 16 at Orlando's City Arts venue is "Edgar Allan Poe: The Exhibit," an art exhibition inspired by the works of Poe. Prizes will be given to four artists.

Clues 40.2: Columbo, Chandler, Christie, Dexter, Ms. Fisher, Teaching Forum, and more.

Clues 40.2 (2022) has been published, featuring its first Teaching Forum—this one on teaching crime fiction after Black Lives Matter, engaging with issues such as race, gender, and class. As usual, we are delighted to have contributors from around the world. See below for abstracts. Contact McFarland for subscriptions or a print copy of the journal. 

Update, 12-30-22. The ebook versions of the issue are now available: Kindle, Nook, Google Play

Around the World Backwards and Forwards
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY/CUNY Graduate School)

Caroline Reitz, the executive editor of Clues, provides an overview of the issue, including articles on Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Columbo, Colin Dexter, contemporary European crime narratives, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, forensic psychiatrists in crime fiction, Deon Meyer, Ms. Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, and a forum on teaching crime fiction after Black Lives Matter.

Rethinking Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944/1946)
STEWART KING (Monash University, Australia)

This review article revisits Raymond Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder” and examines its ongoing relevance for crime fiction studies. It asks to what extent does Chandler’s iconic essay help us to understand and explain the crime genre, both historically and today.

Intersecting Crime: South African State Capture and the Hero-Criminal Binary in Deon Meyer’s The Last Hunt (2019) / SAM NAIDU (Rhodes University, South Africa)

Deon Meyer’s The Last Hunt can be categorized as African noir in its themes of political disillusionment, corruption, and crimes of the state against its citizens, shedding light on contemporary African-European relations. The article examines the novel’s intersections of time, space, national, and transnational with criminal and detective characters, and the blurriness of the hero-criminal binary.

Contemporary European Crime Narratives: “Euro-Glocal”?
THEO D’HAEN (University of Leiden, The Netherlands/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

The article makes a case for the emergence of a particularly European brand of crime fiction, film, and television series that fosters a closer European union.

“Mystery” Beyond Reason:
Mr. Quin, a Revealer of the Powers of Fiction According to Agatha Christie?
MARC VERVEL (Université de Paris, France)

The short story collection The Mysterious Mr. Quin has a special place in Agatha Christie’s work. In these stories where rational investigation opens up to the supernatural, Christie theorizes what is at stake in the desire to read and proposes an expanded conception of the detective story.

The Skeptical Poetics of Colin Dexter’s Morse Novels
MICHAL SÝKORA (Palacký University, Czech Republic)

This article argues that Detective Chief Inspector Morse is a different figure in Colin Dexter’s novels than the popular television series. The author locates Dexter’s novels in British postwar crime fiction, with attention to representations of the social reality of Oxford and gender issues, and reads The Wench Is Dead to argue Morse’s hermeneutic approach to investigation reveals an ironic skepticism about truth.

Colin Dexter’s Classicism / MATTHEW WRIGHT (University of Exeter, UK)

Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books, unlike any other detective novels, are saturated with references to Greek and Latin language and literature. This article explores the significance of Classics and classical scholarship in Dexter’s world and argues that the novels present a consistent (and consistently troubling) view of education and culture. 

Poe and Conan Doyle exhibition.

The Hower House Museum at the University of Akron (OH) will be offering the exhibition "Poe & Doyle: Victorian Crime Fiction" in September and October 2022. It will explore Edgar Allan Poe's techniques that formed the basis for the detective narrative and ways that Arthur Conan Doyle applied these techniques to create Sherlock Holmes.

"The father of Russian detective fiction."

Dostoevsky

In "E. A. Poe and A. A. Shklharevskij" in the Dec. 2020 SIC: Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, Maja Pandzic (University of Zadar, Croatia) discusses the connections among Edgar Allan Poe, Emile Gaboriau, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Aleksandr Andreevich Skljarevski (the last dubbed here "the father of Russian detective fiction").

Penumbra debuts.

Gertrude Atherton, ca. 1906–12.
Library of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Div.

S. T. Joshi, known for his work on H. P. Lovecraft, recently announced the debut of Penumbra, a new annual journal on weird fiction that features fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. The first issue includes a reprint of Gertrude Atherton's "The Caves of Death" (1886) and articles such as the following:

• "The Terror of Solitude": The Supernatural Fiction of Edith Wharton
by John C. Tibbetts

• Finding Sherlock Holmes in Weird Fiction by Nancy Holder

• "The Weird Dominions of the Infinite": Edgar Allan Poe and the Scientific Gothic by Sorina Higgins

The real-life Marie Roget.

"Mary Rogers, The Cigar Girl." NYPL

On Nov 7 at 4 pm, the Hoboken Historical Museum will host a virtual presentation by Montclair State University professor emerita Amy Gilman Srebnick on "The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers,” the case that inspired Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Roget."

Another library podcast with mystery short stories.

William Faulkner by Carl Van Vechten.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Div

The Elmhurst (IL) Public Library offers the Storytime for Grown-Ups podcast. The following mystery-related stories have been read on the podcast:

• "Wasps' Nest" by Agatha Christie
  
• "The Landlady" by Roald Dahl (Edgar winner, Best Short Story)
  
• "Poison" by Roald Dahl
  
• "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner
  
• "Wikipedia Brown" by B. J. Novak
• "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe
  
• "Here Lies Another Blackmailer" by Bill Pronzini
• "The Hangman" by Ian Rankin
  

Codes, ciphers, and mysteries.

On the Oxford University Press blog, Edwin Battistella (Southern Oregon University) discusses the presence of codes and ciphers in works by mystery authors such as Dan Brown, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charlie Lovett.

"The Missing Number" (1922).

Elisabeth Ellicott Poe, right,
1918. Library of Congress,
Prints & Photos Div.

Elisabeth Ellicott Poe (1886–1947) and Vylla Poe Wilson (1883–1969) trained women for national service during World War I and were longtime society and culture reporters for the Washington Post. Dubbed "the Poe Sisters," they were related to Edgar Allan Poe (their great-grandfather was a brother of Poe's grandfather). They were steadfast champions of their relative's work, with Elisabeth writing at least 20 articles on Poe's life and work; Vylla reviewing Dorothy Dow's take on Poe, Dark Glory, for the Post in January 1932; and the sisters establishing a short-lived, Poe-related journal, The Stylus, and coauthoring Poe: A High Priest of the Beautiful (1930). Elisabeth also painted, with some critics stating that her imagery resembled Poe's.

Vylla Poe Wilson, left, 1918.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photos Div.

From May to June 1922, the sisters published "The Missing Number," a serial in 18 parts, in the Post. This mystery about the disappearance of a diplomat's wife in Washington, DC, that involves a Poe-like number cipher was trumpeted by the Post as "the first Poe mystery story in 73 years!" (see below). It featured a sleuthing female reporter, a disreputable medium, an energetic policeman, and more than one distraught family member and sinister servant. Although "The Missing Number" provided an interesting look at Washington life of the time (remember streetcars?), it is a not very successful literary work. It has an unknown half-brother (cheating, for many mystery writers and readers), some cloying romance, and portrayals of African Americans and a deaf-mute that would likely be unpalatable to modern readers.

The Poe Sisters are buried in DC's Glenwood Cemetery. Read Elisabeth's "Poe, the Weird Genius" (Cosmopolitan, Feb. 1909).

Excerpt from "The Missing Number," Washington Post, 31 May 1922.

Ad for "The Missing Number"
Washington Post, 19 May 1922: 2

FSU mystery exhibition curated by 12-year-old.

Joseph, a 12-year-old mystery enthusiast and scholar-in-residence, has curated the exhibition "A Century of Mystery and Intrigue" at Florida State University Library's Special Collections and Archives, which involves trains and includes such works as Freeman Wills Crofts's Inspector French and the Starvel Hollow Tragedy (1927). Joseph writes here about the exhibition, which will remain on view until December 20, 2019 (see also FSU story). Questions about the exhibition (and perhaps Joseph's work at the library) can be directed to preservation librarian Hannah Wiatt Davis.

Edgar Allan Poe, book reviewer.

In Humanities Magazine, journalist Mark Athitakis examines Edgar Allan Poe's role as harsh book reviewer, although Poe managed to nab a gig reviewing his own works (which, perhaps unsurprisingly, he rated as those of "high genius").

Carolyn Wells's "A Reader's Lament" (1899).

Carolyn Wells,
ca. 1923

Carolyn Wells's The Clue (1909) appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and she's also known for her Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In addition, she wrote poetry, such as the following "Reader's Lament" (The Bookman, Mar. 1899, p. 22):

I cannot read the old books
I read long years ago;
Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray,
Bulwer and Scott and Poe.
Marryat's yarns of sailor life,
And Hugo's tales of crime; —
I cannot read the old books,
Because I haven't time.

I love the dear old stories,
My thoughts to them will stray;
But still one must keep posted on
The writers of to-day.
My desk is piled with latest books
I'm striving to despatch;
But ere I've finished all of them,
There'll be another batch.

Hope's new one isn't opened yet,
I've not read James's last;
And Howells is so prolific now,
And Crawford writes so fast.
Evelyn Innes I must skim,
O'er Helbeck I must pore;
The Day's Work I'll enjoy, although
I've read the tales before.

And then there is The King's Jackal,
The Gadfly, Caleb West,
Silence, The Forest Lovers, and—
I can't name all the rest.
I'll try to keep up with the times,
But, oh, I hope that I
May read my David Copperfield
Once more before I die.

Upcoming exhibition: Clever Criminals and Daring Detectives.

Illustration from Arthur Conan
Doyle's "The Adventure of the
Empty House," San Francisco
Call, 5 Mar. 1905

Opening in April at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia will be the exhibition "Clever Criminals and Daring Detectives" that will take a historical look at criminals and detectives in fiction. Materials on display will include the original manuscript of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Empty House" and reflections on mystery collecting of Ellery Queen.

Exhibition, Poe in Baltimore and elsewhere.

Edgar Allan Poe,
from the New York
Tribune, 3 Jan. 1909

The exhibition "The Enigmatic Edgar A. Poe in Baltimore & Beyond" closes at Johns Hopkins University's George Peabody Library on February 5, but you can check out this online version that discusses his cities of residence and the genres in which he wrote, including "Mysteries & Puzzles" that has images of some of his works.