Clues 43.1: Christie, Hamilton, Hammett, Høeg, multilingual study, Ukrainian crime fiction.

Clues: A Journal of Detection 43.1 (2025) has been published; see below for abstracts. Contact McFarland for a hard copy issue or a subscription.

Update, May 26, 2025: Kindle, Nook, and GooglePlay versions of the issue are now available.

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Introduction: Insight into Messy Truths
Caroline Reitz (John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center)

The executive editor of Clues discusses this issue’s contents, including a teaching forum on detective fiction in the multilingual classroom and essays on Agatha Christie, Len Deighton, Dashiell Hammett, Peter Høeg, the femme fatale, older female figures in domestic noir dubbed “toxic,” and Ukrainian crime fiction.

Ukrainian Crime Fiction: Trends, Themes, Traditions
Svitlana (Lana) Krys (MacEwan University, Canada)

This article traces the development of crime fiction in Ukraine: its origins in the gothic literary movement, main authors, historical memory and colonial traumas, role as an instrument of Ukraine’s cultural diplomacy, limited presence in the Soviet era, and proliferation following Ukraine’s independence. 

Sympathy for the Devil: Failed Catharsis and Universal Guilt in Agatha Christie's Curtain
Emilie Laurent (Université Clermont Auvergne, France)
Reading Christie's Curtain as a depiction of an ideological battle between good and evil, this essay analyzes the novel as a manipulation of the reader’s moral judgment that dissolves the genre’s over-optimistic promise of restoration social order and generates anxiety about a possible guilt located within the reader’s self. 

Dangerous Skepticism and the Challenge of Acknowledgment in Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow
Christine Hamm (University of Bergen, Norway)
This essay argues that crime fiction can encourage readings of literature that differ from those criticized by Rita Felski (2015) as outcomes of a “hermeneutics
of suspicion.” Tracing motivations for and effects of skepticism at the plot level,  Nordic noir such as Smilla’s Sense of Snow promotes acknowledgment rather than “critique.”  

Pie in the Sky: Political Readings of Dashiell Hammett’s “Faith”
Jacob A. Zumoff (New Jersey City University)
This essay examines “Faith,” a short story by Dashiell Hammett unpublished in his lifetime, exploring its relationship to detective fiction, proletarian fiction, and literary modernism. The story’s setting suggests a left-wing perspective yet resists easy political categorization, contributing to our understanding of Hammett’s evolving literary approach to detective fiction and complex relationship to left-wing politics and modernism.

A Woman Agent in the Male World of the Cold War Spy Novel:
The Case of Len Deighton’s Fiona Samson
Howard Mason
This essay discusses Len Deighton’s Fiona Samson, a female agent with strong character traits who is working for the West during the Cold War. Samson’s womanhood and femininity, as well as her love of husband and family, eventually take precedence over her agency as a professional intelligence officer.  

The career of Len Deighton.

Spyscape looks at the career of spy novelist Len Deighton, including his early work as a bookjacket designer, his intriguing forays into cooking and cookbooks, and the decision to put Michael Caine in glasses for The Ipcress File. Deighton fans no doubt recall a character from Spy Story named Ferdy Foxwell, which came as a surprise to my family.

BBC Archive: Daphne du Maurier, John le Carre, Len Deighton, et al.

The latest BBC Archive features footage with authors. A few highlights:

• Interview with Daphne du Maurier (1971).

• The lonely world of John le Carre (1966).

• Melvyn Bragg interviews Len Deighton (1977).

• Somerset Maugham discusses his selections of the 10 greatest novels (1954)

About the image: Portrait of Somerset Maugham. NYPL.

Len Deighton, chef.

My Georgetown classmate Lucinda Ebersole (coeditor of Mondo Barbie and Mondo James Dean) points out on her blog that spy novelist Len Deighton, who trained as a pastry chef, also published cookbooks and ran a series of "cook-strips" in the Observer. She posts an excerpt on omelettes here.

Illustrators try their hand at mystery characters.

On Steve Gettis's Web site, various illustrators provide their interpretations of their favorite literary figures. Roger Langridge's Jeeves & Wooster are charming. Mystery-related subjects include Earl Derr Biggers's Charlie Chan, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle, Len Deighton, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes's Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, Ed McBain's Carella and Meyer, and Edgar Allan Poe.

(Hat tip to Quill & Quire)

Happy birthday, Len Deighton.

Len Deighton, ex-pastry cook and author of spy novels such as The Ipcress File (1962; film 1965), Funeral in Berlin (1964; film 1966), and Berlin Game (1983), was born today in London in 1929.

He also used my surname for a character. "Ferdy Foxwell," friend of spy Armstrong, appears in Spy Story (1974; film 1976). I'm uncertain where Deighton came across the name, but the producer of The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall (aka Elleston Trevor) was Ivan Foxwell.