Rudolph receives 2016 Dove Award.

The latest recipient of the George N. Dove Award for contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction is Janet Rudolph, editor of Mystery Readers Journal and founder of Mystery Readers International. The award will be presented today by the Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association; the chair of the Dove Award Committee is Rachel Schaffer (Montana State University Billings). Past Dove recipients include Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY), Douglas G. Greene, P. D. James, H. R. F. Keating, Maureen Reddy (Rhode Island College), J. K. Van Dover (Lincoln University), and yours truly.

Van Dover receives 2015 Dove Award.

The latest recipient of the George N. Dove Award for contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction is J. K. Van Dover (Lincoln University, PA), author of books such as The Judge Dee Novels of R. H. van Gulik: The Case of the Chinese Detective and the American Reader; Making the Detective Story American: Biggers, Van Dine, and Hammett and the Turning Point of the Genre, 1925-1930; and Centurions, Knights, and Other Cops: The Police Novels of Joseph Wambaugh. He also has edited works such as The Critical Response to Raymond Chandler. The award is presented by the Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association; the chair of the Dove Award Committee is Rachel Schaffer (Montana State University Billings). Past Dove recipients include Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY), Douglas G. Greene, P. D. James, H. R. F. Keating, Maureen Reddy (Rhode Island College), and yours truly.

Exhibition: "Mystery Writers Past and Present."

Frances Fyfield

There is a photographic exhibition from UK's National Portrait Gallery, "Mystery Writers Past and Present," on view at Darlington's Head of Steam Museum until December 14. The photos feature contemporary writers such as P. D. James taken by Nicola Kurtz as well as Victorian photos of authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens. The list of Kurtz's photographic subjects in the gallery's collection includes Clare Curzon, Stella Duffy, Frances Fyfield, the late H. R. F. Keating, Val McDermid, Andrew Taylor, and Minette Walters.

A similar 2002 exhibition included photos of Colin Dexter and Ian Rankin.

Reddy receives 2013 Dove Award.

Maureen Reddy (Rhode Island College) is this year's recipient of the George N. Dove Award from the Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association for contributions to the serious study of mystery/crime fiction. Reddy is the author of Traces, Codes, and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction and Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel, among other works. Past recipients of the Dove Award include Frankie Y. Bailey, Douglas G. Greene, the late H. R. F. Keating, P. D. James, Catherine Ross Nickerson, and yours truly.

2012 Dove Awardees: Roberts, Charles.

The Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association has selected this year's recipients of the George N. Dove Award: Eileen Roberts and author Kate Charles, for their work on the long-running Mystery and Crime Weekend at St. Hilda's College, Oxford. The award will be presented during this year's conference on August 17–19.

The Dove Award, named for the late distinguished mystery scholar George N. Dove, recognizes contributions to the serious study of mystery and crime fiction. Past recipients include Douglas G. Greene, the late H. R. F. Keating, Catherine Ross Nickerson, and yours truly.

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."

Clues 29.2: Simenon, Stout, Sayers, et al.

Vol 29, no. 2 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has just been published, including the following topics:

• Analyses of two matchups of the detective vs. archcriminal. The first one is Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Arnold Zeck; John Littlejohn looks at Stout's reasons for creating a major adversary for Wolfe. The second is the Sara Martin Allegre's examination of the complex relationship between Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus and his nemesis, "Big Ger" Cafferty.

• Detection Club president Simon Brett pays tribute to his late colleague H. R. F. Keating:  "Whenever I think of Harry, I think of the Olympic Diving competition."

• Dorothy L. Sayers's engagement with true crime between the wars by Victoria Stewart.

• Ahmet Mithat Efendi's Esrar-i Cinayat, the first Turkish detective novel (1884), by Zeynep Tufekcioglu

• The role of class in the 1930s Maigret novels of Georges Simenon by Bill Alder.

• The use of sound in the works of Raymond Chandler by Eric Rawson and the role of the automobile in the works of Chandler and James M. Cain by Shelby Smoak.

• Gender bending in Mickey Spillane's Vengeance Is Mine! (1950) by Heather Duerre Humann.

• The Montana-set police procedurals of Robert Sims Reid by Rachel Schaffer.

• Margaret Atwood's techniques that lead the reader to become a detective by Lisa A. Wellinghoff.

Now out: E. X. Ferrars companion (ed. Foxwell).

Just out is E. X. Ferrars: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Gina Macdonald with Elizabeth Sanders. This is volume 2 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit (volume 1 is on John Buchan; the Scots will be pleased that both volumes feature writers of Scottish heritage).

Detection Club member and British Crime Writers Assn cofounder Ferrars published her first book, Turn Single, in 1932, and the last, A Choice of Evils, in 1995. Her sleuths include physiotherapist Virginia Freer and her estranged, often feckless husband Felix and retired professor Andrew Basnett (who often poignantly grapples with the effects of aging). Some of her books are still in print with Langtail Press and Doubleday, and Doug Greene of Crippen and Landru plans a collection of her short stories. Very helpful with the book was Peter Mactaggart, Ferrars's nephew and literary executor, who provided the cover photo, manuscript excerpts (including one from an unpublished novel), and valuable insights on Ferrars's life. Readers may like the handy table that lists Ferrars's methods of murder and the works in which they appear.

George C. Scott, left, and
Angela Thornton in E. X. Ferrars's
"We Haven't Seen Her Lately,"
  Kraft Mystery Theatre
NBC, 20 Aug 1958

One fascinating aspect was her duel in print with sci-fi writer John Wyndham over the merits of mystery fiction vs. those of sci-fi.

Another intriguing discovery was "We Haven't Seen Her Lately," the 1958 Kraft Mystery Theatre production of Ferrars's Always Say Die (see photo), in which a woman investigates her aunt's disappearance amid a slew of shady characters.

Shortly before his death, distinguished author-critic H. R. F. Keating, who reviewed Ferrars's Frog in the Throat favorably in the Times, kindly provided a blurb for the back cover. Sadly, Macdonald (coauthor, Scott Turow: A Critical Companion and Shaman or Sherlock? The Native American Detective; author, Robert Ludlum: A Critical Companion) died in September 2010 of leukemia—she worked on this book as she was undergoing medical treatment. Her dedication to this work was inspirational.

BBC Radio 4 Extra: Alexander McCall Smith, more Edgar Wallace.

DVD of 1969–71
Thames series The Mind of
Mr. J. G. Reeder

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Precious Ramotswe's assistant Mma Makutsi takes on a case in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series set in Botswana. It also continues airing the work of Edgar Wallace with The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder (1925)—stories of a detective well versed in the criminal mind that, in the words of the late H. R. F. Keating, "still amuse, intrigue and notably entertain" (Crime & Mystery 32). Episodes usually may be heard for up to a week after broadcast.

Happy 84th birthday, H. R. F. Keating.

Distinguished mystery author-critic H. R. F. Keating—Detection Club member, Diamond Dagger recipient, Edgar nominee (for The Perfect Murder, 1965; Sherlock Holmes: The Man and His World, 1979; and Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books, 1987), and creator of the wise Inspector Ghote—turns 84 today.

H. R. F. Keating this week on BBC Radio 7.

Airing this week on BBC Radio 7 is H. R. F. Keating's Inspector Ghote's First Case, in which Ghote deals with the impending birth of his first child and a sensitive case involving the mysterious death of an English memsahib. Is it suicide or murder? Go here for the schedule or to listen.

H. R. F. Keating: Forgotten? Pshaw.

I find it hard to believe that the Independent calls the 82-year-old distinguished author-critic H. R. F. Keating "forgotten," especially when a new Inspector Ghote novel is due out on our shores this summer.