The return of F. Tennyson Jesse.

F. Tennyson Jesse

In October, the British Library will reprint F. Tennyson Jesse's A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934) as part of its Women Writers series. The novel is based on the Thompson-Bywaters murder case of 1922–23. Jesse—the great-niece of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and a war correspondent, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist—was known for involvement in the series on notable British trials as well as her works with female detective Solange Fontaine.

TLS recalls Jesse's A Pin to See the Peepshow.

F. Tennyson Jesse

The Times Literary Supplement has posted Orlo Williams's 1934 TLS review of F. Tennyson Jesse's A Pin to See the Peepshow (based on the Thompson-Bywaters case of 1922). He lauds "the solidness of Miss Tennyson Jesse’s construction, her intense sympathy with her characters, and the vividness with which she paints the scene of London life during the present century." Jesse—the great-niece of Alfred, Lord Tennyson—is also known for her plays, her volumes in the Notable British Trials series, and her psychic detective Solange Fontaine.

Bibliography, early occult detectives in fiction.

Willa Cather, NYPL

In time for Halloween, Clues contributor Tim Prchal (under his pseudonym Tim Prasil) is compiling a "chronological bibliography of early occult detectives" that begins in 1817 with Doktor K in E. T. A. Hoffman's "Das oede Haus" and runs to 1938 with Judge Keith Hillary Pursuivant in works by Gans T. Field. Authors include Alice and Claude Askew, Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Tennyson Jesse, Arthur Machen, Sax Rohmer, and the obligatory Bram Stoker.

Mystery-related Hirschfeld cartoons.

Truman Capote in Murder by Death

The Web site of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation features online images of the renowned cartoonist's work that reflect the entire span of his long career. Although the resource is a work in progress, those images with a mystery connection include Arsenic and Old Lace (with Boris Karloff, 1941), Basil Rathbone (as Sherlock Holmes, 1990, and in Witness for the Prosecution, 1957), The Bishop Murder Case (1929–30), Dial M for Murder (with Maurice Evans, 1953), Everett Sloane in Crime Doctor (1944), Florence Reed in The Shanghai Gesture (1928), Murder by Death (1976), and A Pin to See the Peepshow (1953).

Friday's Forgotten Books: F. Tennyson Jesse's Murder and Its Motives (1924).

Most criminals are great egoists and inordinately vain, but these two qualities are found to excess in murderers.
—F. Tennyson Jesse, Murder and Its Motives 11

In Murder and Its Motives F. Tennyson Jesse classifies murders into six categories (murder for gain, murder for revenge, murder for elimination, murder for jealousy, murder for the lust of killing, and murder from conviction). She then provides case studies by type: William Palmer (murder for gain, some 15 murders, 1850s), Constance Kent (murder for revenge, 1860; most recently covered in Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher), the Querangals (murder for elimination, brother and sister disposal of spouses, 1881), Mary Eleanor Wheeler (murder for jealousy, killing of her lover's spouse and baby, 1890), Neill Cream (murder for lust of killing, numerous killings, 1892), and Orsini (murder for conviction, tried for an attempt on Emperor Napoleon III, 1858).

This lucid and perceptive book is a must for anyone who wishes to construct convincing criminals in their fiction. Sadly, it is out of print. The 1952 edition is dedicated to three people, one of whom is Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott.

F. Tennyson Jesse, from
the Bookman, June 1914

World War I correspondent, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist F. Tennyson Jesse (1888–1958), the great-niece of Alfred Lord Tennyson, is probably best known for her books in the Notable British Trials series such as that on Madeleine Smith (the subject of David Lean's film Madeleine, 1949) and A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934), which was based on the Thompson-Bywaters murder case. Her work and troubled life are discussed in A Portrait of Fryn: A Biography of F. Tennyson Jesse (1984) by Joanna Colenbrander, Jesse's secretary.

Greene, others see green in London's Bloomsbury auction.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Bloomsbury's Dec 11-12th auction in London garnered £280 (approximately US$419) for a signed copy of Graham Greene's The Third Man, a first edition of Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die earned £3400 (approximately US$5,082), a first edition of Dick Francis's Nerve sold for £260 (approximately US$389), and Ngaio Marsh's Died in the Wool went for a mere £20 (approximately US$30). In addition, a first edition of Greene's England Made Me, with cover art by Margery Allingham's husband Philip Youngman Carter, was sold for £10,000 (approximately US$14,950).

Also in the auction was the Crime Library of Jonathan Goodman, which included F. Tennyson Jesse's Murder and Its Motives with the author's pencil corrections, which garnered £320 (approximately US$478).