Cape Fear locations.

Over on the Travel + Leisure Asia website, Manas Sen Gupta discusses the largely Atlanta-area filming locations for the Apple TV series Cape Fear (based on The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, which has had two film adaptations). The series features Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson, and Javier Bardem.

Score to Cape Fear (1991).

In Film Score Friday, Scott Bettencourt discusses the release by Quartet Records of the score to Cape Fear (dir. Martin Scorcese, 1991), in which composer Elmer Bernstein incorporated elements of composer Bernard Herrmann's score for the earlier Cape Fear film (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1962) as well as Herrmann's score for Torn Curtain (1962) that Alfred Hitchcock rejected (see Steve Vertlieb's account for the story behind that, which resulted in a permanent rupture in the Hitchcock-Herrmann relationship). To listen to clips from the 1991 Cape Fear score, go here. Both films were based on the novel by John D. MacDonald.

Clues 42.1: Carr, Christie, Conan Doyle, Eco, Faulkner, island mysteries, Korean crime fiction, etc.

Vol 42, no. 1 (2024) of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published; see below for abstracts. For print issues or subscriptions, contact McFarland. Ebook versions are available via Kindle and Nook.

Update, 25 May 2024: Google Play ebook of the issue is now available.

Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of Cultures and Works
Caroline Reitz (John Jay College of Criminal Justice–CUNY / CUNY Graduate Center)

The executive editor of Clues provides an overview of the issue, including articles on John Dickson Carr; Agatha Christie; Arthur Conan Doyle in Dutch translation; Umberto Eco; a YA mystery series featuring Indigenous issues; island mysteries; Korean crime fiction; and noir’s relationship with works by William Faulkner, David Goodis, and John D. MacDonald.

Spotlight on... Crime Fiction in Korea: Transformation and Transnationality of the Genre
Jooyeon Rhee (Penn State University)

This essay traces the transnational literary flow and popular imaginations of modernity in colonial Korea (1910–45), the effect of the Korean War and the Cold War, and diverse responses to global neoliberalism in contemporary Korea. It highlights representative themes in each period and notable writers in modern crime fiction.

“A Modernist Lampstand”: Noir and the Avant-garde in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary
Alex Davis (University College Cork, Ireland) 

This essay considers Sanctuary in the context of William Faulkner’s career-long predilection for crime fiction, interpreting his avant-garde appropriation and manipulation of genre writing in the novel against the background of its relationship to American naturalism (including the noir novel) and nineteenth-century European realism.

Despair and the Noir Character
Michael Caleb Tasker 

Noir’s atmosphere of anxiety and/or despair stems not from environment and setting but rather from character and from an outsider defined by and riddled with a very Kierkegaardian sense of existentialist despair. As works by John D. MacDonald and David Goodis demonstrate, the despairing protagonist is the foremost defining characteristic of noir fiction.

“Nobody in the Renaissance conceived of a revenge quite so delicious”:
John Dickson Carr’s Bencolin Stories and Jacobean Revenge Plays
Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

This article argues that John Dickson Carr’s first four novels about Inspector Henri Bencolin each draw from a different early modern revenge tragedy: It Walks by Night alludes to John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi; Castle Skull borrows names and atmosphere from Henry Chettle’s Hoffman; The Lost Gallows nods to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy; and The Corpse in the Waxworks evokes Thomas Middleton’s and William Rowley’s The Changeling. 

Matthew Surridge on The Best of Manhunt.

On Splice Today, Matthew Surridge reviews Stark House Press's The Best of Manhunt, an anthology of stories from an important crime fiction magazine that published authors such as Lawrence Block, David Goodis, Evan Hunter, John D. MacDonald, and Donald Westlake.

John D. MacDonald's "The Deep End" (1964).

A woman taking a swim ends up dead, and a PI (Clu Gulager) questions the conclusion of accidental drowning or suicide. The source for this 1964 episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre, although the credits merely state "based on a book by John P. [sic] MacDonald," is likely The Drowner by John D. MacDonald (Cosmopolitan Jan. 1963; novel 1963). Aldo Ray, Ellen Burstyn, Tina Louise, and Whit Bissell costar. The music for the episode is by John Williams.

Pat Browne, founding editor of Clues, 1932-2013.

Pat Browne, the founding editor of Clues, passed away on December 27, 2013, at age 81. Her obituary has been published in the Toledo Blade, and a memorial event is planned for the Popular Culture Conference in Chicago in April. Memorial contributions may be directed to BGSU's Browne Popular Culture Library.

With the help of her husband, Ray, Pat provided one of the few venues for serious scholarship on the mystery genre, starting with the first issue in spring 1980: the product of a November 1978 conference at the University of South Florida on the work of Travis McGee creator John D. MacDonald. Wrote Pat in the issue:

...[W]e decided that the Popular Press would like to inaugurate a publication devoted exclusively to the detection genre, and I decided that the papers that had been presented at the MacDonald Conference and Mr. MacDonald's comments would constitute the core of that new publication—Clues: A Journal of Detection—under the assumption that few publications could be launched under such auspicious circumstances. (65)

Wrote JDM in this first Clues on Francis M. Nevins Jr.'s piece about his pulp work:

My work habits accounted, I think, for not only the diversity of plot and structure and societal themes in early work, but also for the diversity of the places where they were published. . . . When I tried to work exclusively within a specific genre, everything went stale for me. The words died. (66)

JDM noted elsewhere in this commentary piece, "Were I forced to define my strength, I would say that I am best at creating an illusion of contemporary reality" (66).

After serving as Clues editor for approximately 20 years, Pat retired in 2001, and I spearheaded the acquisition of the journal by Heldref Publications from Bowling Green State University in 2003, with the first issue under new management published in 2004. Clues is now published by McFarland, and we can only hope that Pat's "auspicious circumstances" have been fulfilled, as the journal enters its 32nd year of publication with a theme issue on the work of Tana French.

Excerpt from the table of contents for
Clues 1.1 (spr 1980)

MacDonald x 2: "The Fatal Impulse" (1960).

In this November 1960 episode of Boris Karloff's Thriller TV series, someone bent on political assassination places a bomb in a woman's purse, but the police are hot on the trail. Featuring Robert Lansing, Elisha Cook Jr., and Mary Tyler Moore, it is adapted by author-screenwriter Philip MacDonald (The List of Adrian Messenger, etc.) from the novella "The Impulse" by John D. MacDonald (Cape Fear, etc.) that appeared in the June 1955 issue of Cosmopolitan.

Exhibition: SF in crime fiction.

The exhibition "Bullets across the Bay: The San Francisco Bay Area in Crime Fiction" at UC Berkeley's Doe Library is on display until February 29, 2012, including authors such as Anthony Boucher, Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, and Julie Smith. Article about the exhibition here.

John D. MacDonald pens a rejection letter.

In this undated letter on Letters of Note, Travis McGee creator John D. MacDonald turns the tables on editors regarding rejection letters.

Upcoming new bio, John D. MacDonald.

Buried within the January 26th issue of Publishers Weekly was the news of an upcoming biography of John D. MacDonald, which appears will be published in fall 2009. Further details here.

Donald Westlake, John D. MacDonald.

To add a small mite to the various items around the Internet on the late Donald Westlake: At left is an utterly charming photograph on loan from Maynard MacDonald. Westlake is on the left, John D. MacDonald on the right.

Happy birthday, John D. MacDonald.

MWA Grand Master John D. MacDonald, creator of Florida PI Travis McGee, was born today in 1916. He died in 1986.

His work adapted for the screen includes the celebrated Cape Fear (1962, 1991); "First Prize for Murder" (Studio One, 1957); "Hangover" (The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1962); "The Deep End" (Kraft Suspense Theater, 1964); and The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything (1980).

For an appreciation of MacDonald's work by Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley, go here.

"The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit."—JDM, A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)

Photo credit: John D. MacDonald, right, with fellow author Donald Westlake, date unknown. Photo courtesy of Maynard MacDonald, for the Estate of John D. MacDonald.