Ava Dickerson on the papers of Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels/Barbara Mertz.

An episode of the podcast Another Shirt Ruined (focusing on Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Emerson series) features Ava Dickerson, an archivist at IU Bloomington's Lilly Library, who catalogued the papers of Peters (aka Barbara Michaels and Barbara Mertz). Learn about aspects of the collection, some fans who wrote to Peters, challenges in cataloguing, and more. 

Further Reading: Ava Dickerson, "Journey to the Center of the Mertz" (blog posts). 

New dramatization, Peters' Crocodile on the Sandbank.

Graphic Audio will release in June a new full-cast dramatization of Elizabeth Peters' Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first in her series with 19th-century Egyptologist Amelia Peabody (later Emerson). The intrepid Amelia, armed with her trusty parasol, faces skullduggery on an archaeological dig, including a rampaging mummy.

Grolier Club exhibition: "Imaginary Books."

Sheridan Le Fanu.

On view until February 15, 2025, and online is the exhibition "Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books" at the Grolier Club in New York City. These are nonexistent works that appear in other works. Mysteries include "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" by John H. Watson and Death 'Twixt Wind and Water by Harriet Vane. Vane's study of Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu and Lord Peter Wimsey's scholarly works also are featured. I was most tickled to see The History of Ancient Egypt by famed irascible Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson (first mentioned in Elizabeth Peters' The Deeds of the Disturber).

Remembering the founding of Malice Domestic.

Barbara Mertz, by Sue Feder

My friend Dean James (aka Miranda James) and I were invited by Dr. Elizabeth Mertz (daughter of Barbara Mertz/Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters) to reminisce about the founding of the Malice Domestic convention in which her mother played such an integral role.  It's presented in two parts: Part 1, Part 2.

Joan Hess on The Painted Queen and Elizabeth Peters.

I talk to Joan Hess in Publishers Weekly about The Painted Queen, the last novel of Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Mertz, 1927–2013) completed by Hess after the death of Peters.

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"

Amelia B. Edwards, collector.

Amelia B. Edwards, NYPL

The Museum and Collections blog of University College London discusses the collecting habits of Amelia B. Edwards (1831–92)—author, explorer, cofounder of the Egypt Exploration Fund that supported the expeditions of William Flinders Petrie, and model for Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody Emerson. The photos include one of her study (complete with chandelier). Also mentioned is that English Heritage has placed one of its blue plaques on Edwards's former residence in Clerkenwell.

Foxwell on supporting players, Femmes Fatales.

Miss Clack (Cynthia Etherington, left)
wields her tracts before a skeptical
Rachel Verinder (Vivien Heilbron)
in The Moonstone (1972)

Today on the Femmes Fatales blog I'm talking about five of my favorite supporting characters in mysteries: Grandmama (Anne Perry), Miss Drusilla Clack (Wilkie Collins), Wilson Budd Hotchkiss (Mary Roberts Rinehart), Cordelia Thorn (Ellen Hart), and Ramses Emerson (Elizabeth Peters).

Dr. Barbara Mertz, trailblazer.

Barbara Mertz, right, with Charlotte MacLeod, 1989
Photo by Elizabeth Foxwell

It is impossible to grasp that the ebullient Barbara Mertz, aka MWA Grand Master Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels, has left us at age 85. I first met her when I interviewed her for a University of Maryland journalism class. After 2 hours I emerged, somewhat dazedly (a typical state of affairs in Mertzdom), with a 17-page, single-spaced transcript and a friendship that would endure for nearly 30 years. To her I owe a great deal, not least my career in mystery and—like many other writers—warm memories of her encouragement, support, and singular presence.

Barbara's storming of considerable bastions in her life and career has benefited women from many walks of life as well as mystery readers and writers. When she was a graduate student in Egyptology at the University of Chicago, she was asked, more than once, why she was taking the place of a man, and why was she there anyway, because she was "just going to get married." She was divorced at a time when single parents were regarded as strange creatures, and she worked hard to support two children by publishing a minimum of two books per year and reviewing books. Well into her seventies, Barbara was descending into Egyptian tombs and maintaining a schedule that would make someone a quarter of her age relapse onto a Victorian fainting couch. Always embroiled in some offbeat enterprise, she once took me with her to purchase a cowboy hat, because she was embarking on a tour with Sharyn McCrumb and Joan Hess that would feature their country-music song stylings.

Given today's popularity of intrepid Victorian archaeologist Amelia Peabody Emerson and her inimitable spouse and son, as well as Barbara's Agatha Award for the Jacqueline Kirby novel Naked Once More, it is easy to forget that she had to fight to write humorous mysteries. Unease existed in the publishing world about reader receptivity to humor, and she had to adopt the Peters pseudonym for these books while maintaining the Michaels pen name for her twists on the Gothic novel. She created a stir with Borrower of the Night when art-historian heroine Vicky Bliss ditched two handsome men for a more attractive new job.

Foxwell at LOC, March 14.

Alice Roosevelt
Longworth, sleuth
in two short stories
by Elizabeth Foxwell

I'm speaking at the Library of Congress's Pickford Theater on Wednesday, March 14 at noon on "My Life in Historical Mystery; or, It's All Elizabeth Peters's Fault." It's part of the Mysteries at Noon series sponsored by the LOC Professional Association. As March is Women's History Month, I will be highlighting the women writers and characters that have influenced my work in mystery fiction and nonfiction.

Book bindings exhibition: Mason, Edwards, Stockton, et al.

The online "Beauty for Commerce" exhibition at the University of Rochester features some beautiful book cover and spine designs from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Some examples include:

• Amelia B. Edwards, Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys (1890). Bestselling novelist and explorer Edwards was one of the inspirations for Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody Emerson.

• A. E. W. Mason and Andrew Lang, Parson Kelly (1899). Liberal Member of Parliament Mason is well remembered for the novels The Four Feathers (1902) and Fire Over England (1936), but he also created Inspector Hanaud (At the Villa Rose, etc.). Writer-critic Lang is best known for his various volumes of fairy tales.

• Frank R. Stockton, Afield and Afloat (1900) and Mrs. Clift's Yacht (1896). Stockton is probably best known for the short story "The Lady or the Tiger?" (1882).

About the image: Amelia B. Edwards, NYPL

Amelia Peabody's inspiration.

The Victorian Women Explorers exhibition at UK's National Portrait Gallery includes an image of novelist and Egypt Exploration Fund cofounder Amelia B. Edwards, who was one inspiration for Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody Emerson. Edwards also wrote ghost stories; for some examples, go here.

New edition of Mertz's Red Land, Black Land.

For those who want more historical background on Elizabeth Peters's mysteries in an accessible format, there's a new edition of Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt out from Morrow. Published under the name of Barbara Mertz (Peters's real name), the book illuminates the quotidian details of a fascinating civilization.

Morrow also has issued a revised and expanded edition of Mertz's Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt.

Happy 80th birthday, Barbara Mertz.

MWA Grand Master Barbara Mertz, aka Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, turns 80 today. She published her first novel, The Master of Blacktower, in 1966, and it should be noted that long before the recent flurry of vampire novels, the Michaels novel The Dark on the Other Side (1970) dealt with an emotional vampire and can be read as a horror work (one friend told me that she had to turn on all the lights in her house after she read it—the greatest compliment to an author).

It also should be noted that Mertz, initially working in a publishing climate oriented to formulaic romantic suspense, struggled with her skeptical publishers to write the humorous mysteries with intelligent heroines that she was certain readers would enjoy. Many mystery authors who came after her owe a considerable debt to her persistence. Her redoubtable archaeologist Amelia Peabody Emerson first appeared in the H. Rider Haggard-inspired Crocodile on the Sandbank (1975); other series heroines include Mertz alter ego Jacqueline Kirby (debuted in The Seventh Sinner, 1972) and statuesque art historian Vicky Bliss (debuted in Borrower of the Night, 1973. Mertz is currently working on another Bliss book that will follow Night Train to Memphis. Night Train, a Peters book, features one of the funniest blurbs in blurbing history, written by one Barbara Michaels.)

Mertz's nonfiction Egyptology books Red Land, Black Land and Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs are mainstays of undergraduate Egyptology courses—indeed, a revised edition of Temples will be issued by Morrow in December. She endowed a scholarship for mystery writing at Hood College in Maryland.

Go here to see a Webcast of a 2003 Mertz talk at the Library of Congress.

The last word belongs to Robert Barnard at the first Malice Domestic in 1989: "What can you say about Elizabeth Peters that she hasn't already said?"

Photo credit: Dennis Forbes