Clues 44.1: Indian crime fiction, French, Haycraft, James, Nancy Drew, Palahniuk, Penny, Rawson, and more.

Clues vol. 44, no. 1 (2026) has been published. See below for abstracts. For a subscription, contact McFarland. 

Update, 19 Jun 2026: Nook and Google Play versions are now available.

Introduction: Allusions and Illusions
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY/CUNY Graduate School)
Caroline Reitz, the executive editor of Clues, discusses the contents of the issue, including articles on crime fiction from India, Howard Haycraft's World War II writings, and queer aspects of Nancy Drew, as well as authors John Franklin Bardin, Tana French, P.D. James, Chuck Palahniuk, Louise Penny, Clayton Rawson, and Robert Egerton Swartwout.

Spotlight on... Indian Crime Fiction
TARUN K. SAINT
This essay traces the genre's evolution in India from its inception in the colonial era to recent times. Discussed are regional contexts of crime writing in Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Tamil to establish the historical framework and the recent efflorescence of crime writing in English that has feminist and postcolonial aspects.

Rethinking Democracy and Detective Fiction: The Legacies of Haycraft's Wartime Writings
BARBARA PEZZOTTI (Monash Univ) AND FABRICIO TOCCO (Australian National Univ)
Howard Haycraft's "Dictators, Democrats, and Detectives" (1939); "The Future of the Detective Story"; and "The Rules of the Game" (1941) argued that detective fiction could only flourish in democracies. The authors demonstrate that crime fiction has proven versatile under dictatorships, functioning as a propaganda tool and an instrument of resistance.

"Magical Red Herrings": Personalized Experience and Specialized Knowledge in Clayton Rawson's The Footprints on the Ceiling
NEIL TOBIN
Clayton Rawson, like other magician-authors, was known to employ transferable magical skills while writing his popular mysteries. What may be unique in the genre was his use of a particular magical technique to create extra-deceptive red herrings that target subsets of his readership—and turn their specialized knowledge against them.

Discovering John Franklin Bardin
ROBERT LANCE SNYDER
John Franklin Bardin's The Deadly Percheron (1946), The Last of Philip Banter (1947), and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly (1948) explore dissociative identity disorder. His works, as well as novels by Patricia Highsmith, Helen Eustis, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Millar, substantiate the syndrome's topical frequency after World War II.

Metafiction as Misdirection in R.E. Swartwout's The Boat Race Murder (1933)
COLIN CAVENDISH-JONES (Xiamen Univ, Malaysia)
The Boat Race Murder, Robert Egerton Swartwout's only mystery novel, presents the reader with a plethora of literary references to the previous century of detective stories and locked-room mysteries. Through these references, Swartwout misdirects the reader to expect an intricate solution and an obscure motive for a murder, which is, in fact, simple and committed for sordid financial gain.

Lost Allusions: The Changing Codes of P.D. James
MARJORIE GARBER (Harvard Univ)
Like Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Josephine Tey, P.D. James sometimes used literary allusions in her book titles and plots. Over time, however, the signifying codes in her work began to change, first to hidden "Easter egg" messages and "true crime" references, and finally to modern scientific markers like DNA.

The Gothic and the Girl Detective: Unpacking the Queered) Signification of Nancy Drew
DOROTHY CALABRO (Auburn Univ)
This essay connects the gothic and the queer in the original Nancy Drew mysteries with modern, queer(ed) adaptations to the Nancy Drew universe, including Mabel Maney's Nancy Clue series and Kelly Thompson's Nancy Drew comics. The rift between the represented ideology of the original Nancy Drew mysteries and the gothic truths they hide are embodied in the interpretations and adaptations of queer audiences.

Presentations, Nancy Drew 95th Anniversary Convention.

Toledo [OH] Public Library, which hosts the Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection, has posted videos from the April 2025 Nancy Drew 95th Anniversary Convention, including the following:

• Fisher, founder of the Nancy Drew Sleuths group, discusses "95 Years of Nancy Drew" 

• Fisher on collecting Nancy Drew 

• Stacia Deutsch, who has written under the Nancy Drew pseudonym Carolyn Keene 

• Erika Head on using Nancy Drew in the classroom 

"The Girl Sleuth" exhibition at Syracuse U.

Ending soon at Syracuse University's Bird Library is the exhibition "The Girl Sleuth," with books including such sleuths as Nancy Drew and Peggy Parker. See further details in Syracuse's The Daily Orange.

When Rex Stout met John le Carré.

The Spy Writes blog discusses the interview of John le Carré by Rex Stout for Mademoiselle's July 1964 mystery issue. Stout calls le Carré "unobtrusively handsome" and covers le Carré's revision process; le Carré thinks his own strongest quality is his "critical faculty" (61).

Bonuses for Nancy Drew and Patricia Moyes fans: There's a piece on the girl sleuth plus Moyes's novel Falling Star in the issue. Also, pp. 62–63 features a photo that includes Edgar awardees of that year and other MWA members. Among the luminaries, one can spot Clayton Rawson, Hillary Waugh, and Lawrence Treat in the back; Stout and Dorothy Salisbury Davis in the middle; Howard Haycraft in the front row at left; and Phyllis Whitney in the front row at right.

Online museum exhibition: "Nancy Drew at 90."

Due to COVID-19, the Museum of Childhood Ireland was unable to launch its exhibition "Nancy Drew at 90" in Dun Lagohaire, so it is online instead. It includes details on the cover illustrators and some fascinating international editions such as Alice et les trois clefs (aka The Clue of the Black Keys).

Clues 37.1: Canadian Detective Fiction, Nancy Drew, Shelley, Trauma, Dementia, and More.

Volume 37, no. 1 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published, which can be purchased from McFarland & Co. (Cree-French Canadian author Wayne Arthurson is on the cover). The abstracts for the issue follow below.

Ebook versions available: Google Play, Nook, Kindle

Introduction / JANICE M. ALLAN (Univ of Salford) The executive editor of Clues discusses the contents of Clues vol. 37, no. 1, including articles on dementia in detective fiction, a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem viewed as a detective story, Wayne Arthurson, Giles Blunt, Gail Bowen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Laurie R. King, Nancy Drew, Ron Rash, Rene Saldana Jr., and Peter Temple.

The Sign of the Four and the Detective as a Disrupter of Order / NATHANAEL T. BOOTH (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China). Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four (1890) often is read in the context of British imperialism and bourgeois rationality, which stresses the problematic nature of Sherlock Holmes’s activity as a detective. Separated from its imperialist context, the novel shows a Holmes who unsettles (rather than restores) social order.

“I ain’t going to the jailhouse if I can help it”: The Thriller Impulse in Ron Rash’s One Foot in Eden / JIM COBY (University of Alabama in Huntsville). This essay examines how the contemporary Appalachian writer Ron Rash employs the tropes of mystery thrillers—tropes largely ignored in southern fiction—in his novel One Foot in Eden (2002), as he grapples with an increasingly urbanized Appalachia.

René Saldaña Jr.’s Innovations of Children’s Detective Fiction in the Mickey Rangel Series / AMY CUMMINS (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley). René Saldaña Jr.’s Mickey Rangel series (Arte Público, 2009–18) both fulfills and rewrites the conventions of children’s detective fiction. On the south Texas border of the United States, fifth-grade detective Mickey solves cases while facing social problems and unanswered questions, aided by a mysterious Angel as his secret sidekick.

Trauma and Contemporary Crime Fiction / MARY ANN GILLIES (Simon Fraser University, Canada). This article explores the role of trauma in contemporary crime novels by Laurie R. King and Peter Temple. It argues that, as understandings of what constitutes trauma have shifted over the last century, crime fiction has adapted as well, representing trauma in sophisticated and complex ways and, in so doing, mirroring the contemporary preoccupation with it.

The Case of the Missing Memory: Dementia and the Fictional Detective / MARLA HARRIS. This essay explores the challenges of creating a detective with dementia in Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind (2005), Adele LaPlante’s Turn of Mind (2011) and Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing (2014). As these metaphysical narratives feature paradoxes of identity, they can help destigmatize this devastating condition.

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (1939).

Bonita Granville

Bonita Granville stars in the fourth film featuring the intrepid girl detective, looking into skullduggery involving the residence of two elderly sisters.

Nancy Drew exhibition, UNCG.

Special Collections and University Archives at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Jackson Library is hosting the exhibition "Nancy Drew: Girl Detective and Cultural Icon" that includes books and artifacts from the archives (such as The Nancy Drew Mystery Game and lunchbox).

The career of Edward Stratemeyer.

Edward Stratemeyer.
NYPL

The New Antiquarian blog of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America looks at the career of Edward Stratemeyer (1862–1930), who launched the Stratemeyer Syndicate that published the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and countless other children's series.

Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys exhibition.

On view until June 8 at the Lawrence Library in Pepperell, MA, is "Mysteries Revealed Book Illustration: Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys," an exhibition of original cover art and first editions of both children's series.

"Iconic detectives" exhibition at Ohio State.

On view until September 17 is "Hot on the Trail of Iconic Detectives," an exhibition at Ohio State University's Thompson Library Gallery that features detectives from dime novels, young adult books, comic books, films, and manga. They include Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Dick Tracy, Coffin Ed Johnson, and Grave Digger Jones.

"Hot on the Trail of Iconic Detectives." Curated by Jennifer
Schnabel, English Librarian, University Libraries, OSU.

Clues 35.1: Conan Doyle, French, Mitchell, Oates, Orczy et al.

Clues vol. 35, no. 1 (2017) has been published. Contact McFarland to obtain a print copy of the issue or to subscribe to the journal.

• Kindle version
• Google Play version
• Nook version

The following are the abstracts for the issue:

Introduction: Reevaluating the Past and the Present
JANICE M. ALLAN

After Sherlock: The Age of Fallible Detectives

MAURIZIO ASCARI (University of Bologna)
In the wake of Sherlock Holmes’s success, writers and critics explored the relationship of the fallible detective to the ideological and aesthetic characteristics of the Golden Age. The author examines this phenomenon, shedding light on the transition between the infallible detectives of positivism and the vulnerable detectives of post–World War II psycho-thrillers.

Old Holmes: Sherlock, Testosterone, and "The Creeping Man" SYLVIA PAMBOUKIAN (Robert Morris University)

Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Creeping Man” captures the early–twentieth century’s interest in male menopause and hormone replacement. The now-retired Sherlock Holmes and the aged Professor Presbury embody the conflict between aging as diminishment and aging as healthy and vigorous, a conflict still affecting readers who hesitate to accept Holmes as elderly. 

"Look at This Map": Arthur Conan Doyle's Use of Diegetic Illustrations in The Return of Sherlock Holmes 
THOMAS VRANKEN (University of Melbourne)

Four stories from The Return of Sherlock Holmes in the Strand Magazine and Collier's Weekly featured hand-drawn maps and other visual material supposedly created by Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters. These peculiar diegetic phenomena serve an ambivalent, even contradictory, function, both drawing in and repulsing the reader.

Arthur Conan Doyle's Lens KATHERINE VOYLES
The author argues that relations of scale are central to the late-nineteenth-century detective fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, in which the movement between large and small, far and near, and the distant and the intimate is condensed by making Sherlock Holmes’s own vision the locus of that movement.

True Cock-and-Bull Stories: Negotiating Narrative Authority in Emmuska Orczy’s “Man in the Corner” Tales RACHEL SMILLIE
Critical studies of Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s “Man in the Corner” narratives have been dominated by the collected edition The Old Man in the Corner; however, this edition fundamentally alters the dynamic of the original stories. Revisiting the original tales, this article interrogates the relationship among detective, narrator, and reader.

Podcast on 1970s female detectives on TV.

Kate Mulgrew in Mrs. Columbo (1979)

The Law & Humanities blog calls attention to this podcast on 1970s female TV detectives from Advanced TV Herstory. The episode covers the Nancy Drew TV series with Pamela Sue Martin, Mrs. Columbo with Kate Mulgrew, and Charlie's Angels.

Hear excerpts from July 10th Nancy Drew panel.

Nancy Drew panelists at the Amer
Women Writers Nat Museum. Back row:
Elizabeth Foxwell, Ann Hudak.
Front row: Kathy Harig, Leona Fisher

I've posted some audio clips from my July 10th panel "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" at the American Women Writers National Museum:

• Leona Fisher (Georgetown University) on Mildred Wirt Benson and her often difficult relationship with the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

• Ann Hudak (curator, Nancy Drew & Friends exhibition, U-MD) reads a hilarious quote regarding the "dangers" of the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

• Kathy Harig (Mystery Loves Company, Oxford, MD) on Chassie West's involvement with the series.

• The panelists discuss the reactions of librarians and the public to the Nancy Drew series.

Today's Nancy Drew panel, door prizes, and Mildred Wirt Benson.

Today's noon panel that I'm moderating at the American Women Writers National Museum in Washington, DC, is particularly

appropriate. It's on "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" (on the history and enduring appeal of this girl sleuth, with George-town's Leona Fisher; Mystery Loves Company's Kathy Harig; and University of Maryland-College Park's Ann Hudak, curator of the "Nancy Drew and Friends" exhibition) and takes place on the birthday of Mildred Wirt Benson (1905–2002), who wrote the first seven Nancy Drew books as well as numerous other girls' series books. Kathy Harig promises some Nancy Drew door prizes for some lucky attendees.

My events page is here.

July 10 panel on Nancy Drew.

A reminder that I'll be moderating a panel on Tuesday, July 10, at the American Women Writers National Museum in Washington, DC: "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" (on the history and enduring appeal of this girl sleuth, with Georgetown's Leona Fisher; Mystery Loves Company's Kathy Harig; and University of Maryland-College Park's Ann Hudak, curator of the "Nancy Drew and Friends" exhibition). My events page is here.

Update. Kathy Harig promises some Nancy Drew door prizes for some lucky attendees.

Coming up: Nancy Drew, DC mysteries panels.

I'm moderating two upcoming panels at the American Women Writers National Museum in Washington, DC: "Mysterious Women Who Know Their Place" on Friday, June 8 (on DC-area mysteries, with Donna Andrews, Karna Small Bodman, Ellen Crosby, and Marcia Talley, and including some past authors who used DC locales) and "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" on Tuesday, July 10 (on this girl sleuth's enduring appeal, with Georgetown's Leona Fisher, Mystery Loves Company's Kathy Harig, and University of Maryland-College Park's Ann Hudak). My events page is here.

Product of the Day: Sign of the Twisted Candles T-shirt.

A T-shirt with the cover of the Nancy Drew novel The Sign of the Twisted Candles (1933), from Out of Print Clothing.

A different bestseller list.

Applewood Books offers a change of pace from the typical bestseller list. At no. 5: the first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock, first published in 1930. At no. 6: The Tower Treasure, the first in the Hardy Boys series, first published in 1927.

Nancy Pickard on Barnes and Noble Studio.

Nancy Pickard discusses her new book The Scent of Rain and Lightning on Barnes & Noble Studio, particularly "the startling things that can happen to human beings when they think their lives are going along on a certain trajectory," as well as the story behind how she became a novelist and her role model, Nancy Drew.