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"

Monash's "Body in the Library" exhibition.

Cover of the Detection Club's
Ask a Policeman, featured in the
Monash University exhibition

Monash University's "The Body in the Library' exhibition provides a rich visual panorama of mystery history and is on display until June 8. Online highlights include covers of wonderfully lurid works by Sax Rohmer, various Detection Club works, detective magazines, and one of the Dick Donovan series that is contemporary with the Holmes stories (series discussed in Clues 26.2). Not surprisingly for an Australian university, special attention is paid to Australian and New Zealand authors (such as Fergus Hume, Ngaio Marsh, Helen Simpson, and Arthur Upfield) and an Australian round-robin mystery novel of 1936. A welcome addition is "Clarice Dyke, the Female Detective" (1883) by Harry Rockwood (aka Ernest A. Young) that features an early female sleuth.

Cornerstone: Re-enter Sir John (1932).
Note: This continues my occasional series on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list (those mysteries deemed essential by Howard Haycraft and Ellery Queen).
Dane, Clemence [Winifred Ashton], and Helen Simpson [Helen de Guerry Simpson Browne]. Re-enter Sir John (1932)

“Circumstances,” went on Sir John, “are often bare-faced liars.”
(Re-enter Sir John 63)

Sir John Saumarez, master thespian and sometime sleuth, investigates an accusation of cheating at cards against his protégé, which turns deadly when the protégé’s landlady is murdered on a London street. The book’s extraordinary climax features Sir John confronting the killer via a silent film he has made with his evidence.

Sir John debuted in Enter Sir John (1928), which was adapted as the Hitchcock film Murder! (1930), and also appears in Author Unknown (aka Printer’s Devil, 1930) and ’Vantage Striker (aka The Prime Minister Is Dead, 1931, written by Helen Simpson). Sadly, none of these works, nor Re-enter Sir John, are currently in print (hint to mystery small presses).

British artist and writer Clemence Dane (1888-1965) wore many hats in her life. Called “a gallant old girl” by her longtime friend Noël Coward and believed to be the model for Madame Arcati in Coward's Blithe Spirit, she wrote the play A Bill of Divorcement (later made into a film starring Katharine Hepburn) and won an Oscar for her original story for Perfect Strangers (aka Vacation from Marriage, 1945) with Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr. She also was a contributor to the Detection Club’s round-robin mystery The Floating Admiral (1931).

Australian-born Helen Simpson (1897-1940) founded the Oxford Women’s Dramatic Society and published novels, plays, and poems. She contributed to the Detection Club work Ask a Policeman (1933). Besides the Sir John series, her other mystery work includes Acquittal (1925); Cups, Wands, and Swords (1927); and Under Capricorn (1937), the latter made into the Hitchcock film of the same name. She married Denis John Browne, who became an eminent surgeon for London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and was the nephew of Australian novelist Rolf Boldrewood.