Academe: More notable U.S. espionage novels.

On the Academe blog Martin Kich (Wright State University) continues his series on "Fifty Notable American Espionage Novels" with the following:

Peter Lorre in
The Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938)

• Helen MacInnes, Assignment in Brittany (1942)

• Colin MacKinnon, Finding Hoseyn (1987)

• Joe Maggio, The Company Man (1972)


• John P. Marquand, Stopover Tokyo
(1957; Mr. Moto takes on the communists)

• Wilson McCarthy, The Detail (1973) 

• Charles McCarry, The Miernick Dossier (1973)

Here's a rundown of Kich's earlier choices.

U.S. writers on Time covers.

John P. Marquand,
from The Rotarian
(Aug 1949)

The Web site of the American Writers Museum (a proposed new museum on American literature) highlights the Time magazine covers since 1923 that have featured U.S. writers. Mystery fans will appreciate the ones with Craig Rice (1946), Mr. Moto creator John P. Marquand (1949), noted mystery critic and Columbia University provost Jacques Barzun (1956), Scott Turow (1990), and Michael Crichton (1995). Missed is James Gould Cozzens (1957), author of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work The Just and the Unjust (1942).

Has a writer ever been selected as Time's Person of the Year? I can't recall.

Newburyport Festival honors John P. Marquand.

This week's Newburyport Literary Festival in Massachusetts honors Mr. Moto creator and Pulitzer Prize winner John P. Marquand (1893–1960); Boston Globe preview here. Joanne Dobson (Agatha nominee for the Emily Dickinson-inspired Quieter Than Sleep) is one of the featured authors.

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos. About the image: Peter Lorre in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation [1939, dir. Norman Foster])

Happy birthday, John P. Marquand.

John P. Marquand, a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Late George Apley (1937) and renowned in mysterydom as the creator of Japanese intelligence officer Mr. Moto, was born today in 1893 in Wilmington, Delaware. Marquand was the nephew of transcendentalist Margaret Fuller and a cousin of architect Buckminster Fuller. By the time of the author's death in 1960, Mr. Moto had appeared in six novels (No Hero; Thank You, Mr. Moto; Think Fast, Mr. Moto; Mr. Moto Is So Sorry; Last Laugh, Mr. Moto; and Stopover: Tokyo) and eight films, and Marquand had produced more than a dozen highly lucrative mainstream novels and a number of short stories.

Sadly, No Hero—Marquand's contribution to the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list—is out of print.