Clues CFP: BIPOC female detectives.

Seeking to illuminate an often marginalized space, this Clues theme issue will focus on female detectives who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color); span eras, genres, and geographical locations; and appear in texts, TV programs, films, and other media. Of particular interest are intersections among race, indigeneity, gender, age, class, or sexuality in these works, as well as projects that center BIPOC authorship and scholarship. 

Some Suggested Topics:  

• BIPOC female detective figures in African and Asian crime fiction, such as in works by Leye Adenle, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Angela Makholwa, and Jane De Suza. 
• BIPOC female detectives in hard-boiled and traditional mysteries that might include characters such as Carolina Garcia-Aguilera’s Lupe Solano, Eleanor Taylor Bland’s Marti MacAlister, Leslie Glass’s April Woo, Sujata Massey’s Rei Shimura and Perveen Mistry, Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, BarbaraNeely’s Blanche White, S. J. Rozan’s Lydia Chin, Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle and Odessa Jones, and Paula L. Woods’s Charlotte Justice. 
• BIPOC female detectives in film and television series such as Get Christie Love! (1974–75, TV movie 2018), Angie Tribeca (2016), and Black Earth Rising (2018). 
• BIPOC female detectives in comics/graphic novels such as Storm and Misty Knight of Marvel Comics, Martha Washington of Dark Horse Comics, and Vixen of DC Comics. 
• BIPOC female sidekicks such as Janet Evanovich’s Lula, Elementary’s Joan H. Watson, or BIPOC detecting teams such as those in Cheryl Head’s Charlie Mack series or Ausmat Zehanat Khan’s Inaya Rahman series. 
• BIPOC female detectives of male authors such as Kwei Quartey, Deon Meyer, and Alexander McCall Smith. 
• Analyses of historical BIPOC female detectives in crime fiction such as in Fergus Hume’s Hagar of the Pawnshop (1898) and Pauline E. Hopkins’s Hagar’s Daughter (1901). 
• Analyses that queer the BIPOC female detective, or examine the intersections between gender and sexuality in these works. 
• Relationships between BIPOC female detectives and criminals/criminality. 

Submissions should include a proposal of approximately 250 words and a brief biosketch. Proposals due: May 30, 2023. Submit proposals to: Prof. Sam Naidu, email: s.naidu <at> ru.ac.za. Full manuscripts of approximately 6,000 words based on an accepted proposal will be due by September 30, 2023.

Clues 38.2: Genre b(l)ending.

Volume 38, number 2 of Clues: A Journal of Detection, guest edited by Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna), has been published on the theme "Genre B(l)ending: Crime's Hybrid Forms." Below are the abstracts for the issue. Contact McFarland to order the issue or a Clues subscription. 

Update, 9-14-20. The ebook versions are now available: Google Play, Kindle, Nook.

Introduction: Make It New, but Don’t Forget / MAURIZIO ASCARI (University of Bologna)

G. K. Chesterton’s Postmodern Anti-Detective Story: Generic Innovation and Transgression in “The White Pillars Murder” / NILS CLAUSSON (University of Regina, Canada)
G. K. Chesterton’s undervalued story “The White Pillars Murder” anticipates the postmodern anti-detective story in the way it transgresses the conventions of the Holmes-style analytic detective story and subversively introduces political critique into a genre, the Golden Age country house mystery, widely regarded as either apolitical or conservative. 

Murder, Mayhem, and Madness: John Dickson Carr’s Gothic Detective Stories / STEFANO SERAFINI (University of Toronto)
This essay investigates the contact zones between gothic and detective fiction within the early work of the significant yet largely neglected author John Dickson Carr. By revealing the transgressive and contaminated character of his narratives, this essay also provides a more nuanced picture of interwar crime-writing, the literary boundaries of which were constantly violated and renegotiated. 

The Cowboy and the Detective: The Case of Craig Johnson / ANTOINE DECHÊNE
This essay focuses on Craig Johnson’s charismatic protagonist Walt Longmire, the county sheriff of Absaroka, Wyoming. A cowboy-detective par excellence, Longmire embodies the interrelationship between the Western and detective fiction while offering a good example of “glocal literature”—that is, a form of literature that is both global and local. 

James Church’s A Corpse in the Koryo and His Inspector O Series: A Noir/Spy Thriller Hybrid Set in North Korea / DAVID C. WRIGHT JR. (Misericordia University)
Analysis of A Corpse in the Koryo, the first book in the Inspector O series by James Church, shows that this series featuring a North Korean detective constitutes a successful genre hybrid: a hard-boiled detective thriller, à la Raymond Chandler, combined with a spy novel in the style of John le Carré. 

Erin go braugh: St. Patrick's Day mysteries.

For those wearin' the green today like me (who had Irish maternal grandparents), some St. Patrick's Day mysteries:

• Death Takes Up a Collection, by the late (and sorely missed) Sister Carol Anne O'Marie

• A Great Day for the Deadly, by Jane Haddam

• Irish Eyes, by Kathy Hogan Trocheck (aka Mary Kay Andrews)

• Plum Lucky, by Janet Evanovich

• St. Patrick's Day Murder, by Leslie Meier

Ask Janet Evanovich.

Time magazine is asking readers to submit questions for Stephanie Plum creator Janet Evanovich for an interview slated for an upcoming issue.

Happy birthday, Ellen Glasgow; Janet Evanovich.

Richmond's own Ellen Glasgow was born today in 1873. A proponent of women's suffrage and a member of a literary circle that included Allen Tate and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Glasgow won the Pulitzer Prize for In This Our Life (1941). She died in 1945.

And one-time Trentonian and Silver Dagger winner Janet Evanovich was born today in 1943. The creator of hapless bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, Evanovich--for this native Jersey girl--perfectly captures the bighaired, car-obsessed culture of South Jersey. Her upcoming Plum novel is Fearless Fourteen (out in June); another recent work is How I Write.