New Clues CFP: Mid-twentieth-century American women crime writers.

There is a new call for papers for a Clues: A Journal of Detection theme issue on the work of mid–twentieth-century American female crime writers. The guest editors are Erin A. Smith (University of Texas at Dallas) and Clare Rolens (Palomar College). Proposals are due 15 January 2027, with full essays of 5,000 to 6,000 words due 1 August 2027. 

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.

New film music releases: Goldfinger, The Talented Mr. Ripley

As Scott Bettencourt reports in Film Score Friday, there are two releases of potential interest:

• 60th anniversary edition of the score to the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964, composed by John Barry, La-La Land) 

• Score to The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, composed by Gabriel Yared, Music Box)

Map of Maigret's Paris.

Georges Simenon.

Coming up for release in September from Herb Lester Associates is Maigret's Paris, a map of locations from the Chief Inspector Maigret oeuvre of Georges Simenon. 

Other maps of potential interest: 

• The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles
• Agatha Christie's England
• John le Carré's London
• The World of Patricia Highsmith

Upcoming classic thrillers, Library of America.

On January 3, the Library of America announced some of its fall 2023 releases, which included the following:

(1) Five Classic Thrillers 1961–1964 (The Murderers by Fredric Brown, The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, Dead Calm by Charles Williams, The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, The Score by Richard Stark [Donald Westlake])

(2) Four Classic Thrillers 1964–1969 (The Fiend by Margaret Millar, Doll by Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], Run Man Run by Chester Himes, The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith)

Below are some critics' reactions to the works in these volumes.

Re Brown's The Murderers: Sgt. Cuff [John Winterich] in 30 Sept. 1961 Saturday Review dubbed it "highly amative."

Re Highsmith's Tremor of Forgery: Terrence Rafferty in the 4 Jan. 1988 New Yorker dubbed the book "nihilistic."

Re Himes's Run Man Run: Sgt. Cuff in the 31 Dec. 1966 Saturday Review regarded this as a "[t]aut, devilish, ably-written slice of life—and death."

Re Hughes's Expendable Man (Edgar nominee, Best Novel): Kirkus lauded its "savage momentum."

Re Marlowe's The Name of the Game Is Death: Anthony Boucher in the 11 Feb 1962 New York Times believed that Marlowe had reached "an impressive new high."

Reading group on Caspary, Highsmith, Hughes, Millar.

Edgar nominee Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY) will be facilitating a Zoom reading group from late September to December for the Center for Fiction on "Women Crime Fiction Writers of the 1940s and '50s."  Books covered will be Laura by Vera Caspary, Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, and Beast in View by Margaret Millar.

Symons's "The Mystique of the Detective Story" (1981).

In March 1981 author-critic (Mortal Consequences/Bloody Murder, etc.) and then-Detection Club president Julian Symons (1912–94) delivered a lecture on "The Mystique of the Detective Story" at the Vancouver Institute, contrasting modern works with those of the Golden Age. He gave a humorous precis of a typical English country-house mystery and emphasized "the power of reason" in Golden Age mysteries. Symons discussed the work of Patricia Highsmith, noting, "Ripley is the horrific modern counterpart of [E. W. Hornung's] Raffles." He also dealt with the mysteries of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell as well as his own books. "Whatever its merits may be, [the crime story] does begin and end as sensational literature," he stated. He mentioned his admiration for George V. Higgins, as well as Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, and critiqued John Creasey. Symons considered Nicholas Blake (aka Cecil Day-Lewis) as one writer who bridged Golden Age and modern mysteries.

Clues vol. 33 now in Kindle format.

For those with e-readers: Clues 33.1 and Clues 33.2 (Patricia Highsmith issue) are now available in Kindle format.

Clues 33.1 (2015)
• Kindle version
• Abstracts

Clues 33.2 (2015; theme issue on Patricia Highsmith, with new revelations about Per Wahlöö)

• Kindle version
• Abstracts

Clues 33.2: Patricia Highsmith, Per Wahlöö.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Patricia Highsmith's death and the 40th anniversary of Per Wahlöö's death, Clues 33.2 (2015) has been published. It is a theme issue on the work of Highsmith, plus reveals Wahlöö's plans for another Martin Beck novel near the end of his life. Abstracts follow below. Contact McFarland to order the issue or to subscribe to the journal.

Update. Issue is now available on Nook, Kindle, and Google Play

Introduction: Re-Evaluating Patricia Highsmith
FIONA PETERS (Bath Spa Univ, UK)

Conformity and Singularity in Patricia Highsmith’s Early Novels
FIONA PETERS
This essay explores Highsmith’s critique of the American suburbs in the novels of the 1950s and early 1960s. It focuses on This Sweet Sickness, highlighting not only Highsmith’s critique of conformity but also her recognition of the threat of psychic breakdown for those who resisted cultural norms.

“Sooner or later most of us get hooked”:
The Question of Insanity in Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley
SAMANTHA WALTON (Bath Spa Univ, UK)
This article considers constructions of insanity in Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley in the context of historical understandings of psychopathy and sociopathic personality disturbance. It examines Patricia Highsmith’s psychological influences and assesses how her novels have been read in relation to changing notions of criminal insanity in psychiatry, law, and culture.

Under an Atomic Sky: Patricia Highsmith, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Apocalyptic Imagination
ILSE SCHRYNEMAKERS (Queensboro Community College, NY)
This essay contextualizes Patricia Highsmith’s crime fiction within the ethos of a world with the atomic bomb, examining how her characters fit the prototype of Americans striving for and achieving a comfortable life. It also explores the significance of characters in such a world committing seemingly irrational actions.

Living “As If”: Ripley’s Imaginary and the Problem of Other People in The Talented Mr. Ripley
BRUCE WYSE (Wilfrid Laurier Univ, Canada)
In Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom Ripley finds reading people a challenge but copes through a form of everyday detection. The author argues that Ripley is an “as-if” character who passes for “normal” until his fantasized rapport with Dickie collapses. Through Dickie’s murder, he recaptures this imaginary bond.

"The Criminal Neglect of Detective Fiction."

Marjorie Hope Nicolson.
From Smith College's
yearbook Class of 1930

In the 4 June 2015 Times Higher Education, University of Ulster English professor Richard Bradford wonders why academe treats crime fiction as "worthy of inspection but little respect." Some of the writers mentioned are W. H. Auden, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Patricia Highsmith, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edmund Wilson. He states that Smith College English professor Marjorie Hope Nicolson was the first to explore the relationship of academics to detective fiction in "The Professor and the Detective" (Atlantic Monthly, Apr 1929, 483–93), but notes that she was fairly dismissive in her piece.

New Clues CFP: Patricia Highsmith.

Le cri du hibou (The Cry of the Owl),
dir. Claude Chabrol (1987, based on
the novel by Patricia Highsmith)

A Call for Papers has been posted for the Clues 2015 issue "Re-Evaluating Patricia Highsmith," guest edited by Fiona Peters (Bath Spa University, UK). Proposals for articles are due by May 1.

Clues 31.2: Collins, Harvey, Highsmith, Parker, South African and Spanish crime fiction.

Clues 31.2 has been published. The following is a summary of the contents (with links on the article titles). To order the issue or subscribe to Clues, visit this Web page or download the subscription flyer.

Introduction: Journeys through Crime, Time, and Space. JANICE M. ALLAN

From Enigmas to Emotions: The Twentieth-Century Canonization of Crime Fiction. MAURIZIO ASCARI (Univ of Bologna). Starting from the early-twentieth-century criticism of the “clue-puzzle” tradition, the author investigates the progressive return of emotions to the scene of both creative and critical crime writing. The analysis encompasses aspects of the twentieth-century canonization of crime fiction, dispelling some lingering critical prejudices and presenting the genre as complex.

Enlightenment, Counter-Enlightenment: Detection, Reason, and Genius in Tales of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. GREG SEVIK (Cayuga Community College, NY). The author explores the complex relationship between detective fiction and traditions of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, including romanticism. Given this background, he argues that detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle highlight the productive tension within Western reason among rule-bound rationality, critical reflection, and the inexplicability of genius.

True Crime in Bermondsey: Representations of Maria Manning. ANNA KAY (Univ of Melbourne). The author examines the literary representations of the nineteenth-century murderess Maria Manning, arguing that the frequently complex and contradictory images that emerged of Manning illuminate broader insights into Victorian conceptions of gender, sexuality, and criminality.

Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady and Feminine Reason:
“Quite incredible, and nevertheless quite true!” TABITHA SPARKS (McGill Univ, Canada). The author examines Collins’s 1875 detective novel The Law and the Lady as a site of conflict between institutional, legal power and feminine resistance to it, with a disabled character upsetting the rigid gender and social norms that underwrite the novel’s central mystery.

“What we call civilization”: Raymond Chandler’s Geographic Critique of Socioeconomic Inequalities in the Philip Marlowe Novels—A Barthesian Reading. PETER CHOMKO. In his Philip Marlowe novels, Raymond Chandler subverts the formulaic narrative structure common to much mainstream crime fiction and, in doing so, opens up to the popular imagination new ways of deconstructing many mid-century myths about Los Angeles. Unlike the fictional detectives who preceded him, Marlowe does not solve crimes so much as expose them, bringing to light the corrupt superstructure of inequality and injustice that shapes—and is shaped by—the Los Angeles landscape.

Liminality and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. PETER MESSENT (Univ of Nottingham, UK). The author examines Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley to illustrate the role of liminality in her text. Highsmith explores the relationship among violent crime, deception, and the free-floating nature of subjectivity to foreground the ability to move between selves. Such transitions destabilize any notion of the grounded self and, moreover, radically challenge the understanding of the meaning of civilization and culture.
 
Literary Allusions in Robert B. Parker’s Spenser Series. MARTY S. KNEPPER (Morningside College, IA). Although Robert B. Parker and his private-eye hero Spenser had no great love of academics, they both loved reading. The first-person narrative and dialogue in the Spenser series display a broad range of literary references, serving various artistic purposes and giving pleasure to book-loving readers. (This article includes an appendix that lists appearances of literary allusions in the Spenser series)

Masochism and the Novela Negra: The Case of Francisco González Ledesma. SHELLEY GODSLAND (Univ of Birmingham, UK). The author argues that the novella negra exposes and explores the masochism of its tough male investigator, as did its predecessor, the American hard-boiled detective. In Expediente Barcelona (1983) by Francisco González Ledesma, the protagonist’s masochistic attitudes and behaviors are illuminated through discussion of Freudian and other thinking on masochism.

“There’s nothing people won’t do to one another, if the circumstances are right”: Male Rape and the Politics of Representation in John Harvey’s Police Procedural Easy Meat. CHARLOTTE BEYER (Univ of Gloucestershire, UK). The author discusses portrayals of male rape and in John Harvey’s police procedural novel Easy Meat(1996), exploring how the novel interrogates the representation of sexual crime, male rape, and masculinity in crime fiction. By examining Harvey’s portrayal of masculinity and sexuality in Easy Meat, the author explores the ways in which crime fiction problematizes the politics of representing sexual crime.

Crime Fiction and the Armchair Traveler: The Case of Martin Walker’s Bruno Courrèges Series. JOHN SCAGGS (Southwestern College, KS). The defining characteristic of Martin Walker’s Bruno Courrèges novels is their detailed sense of place. The author examines how the sense of place is created in the novels and suggests that, rather than merely being a simple backdrop against which the plots of the novels unfold, it is an integral part of their themes and narrative structures.

“You Think It’s Possible to Fix Broken Things?”: Terror in the South African Crime Fiction of Margie Orford and Jassy Mackenzie. MARLA HARRIS. Drawing on the work of Robert J. C. Young, the author argues that Jassy Mackenzie and Margie Orford’s crime novels of post–apartheid South Africa offer coping strategies in the face of inexplicable violence. As they fundamentally are about living with terror and terrorism, they resonate with contemporary American readers.

REVIEWS
Saturo Saito. Detective Fiction and the Rise of the Japanese Novel, 1880–1930. Elizabeth Blakesley

Michael Dirda. On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling. Natalie Hevener Kaufman

Melissa Schaub. Middlebrow Feminism in Classic British Detective Fiction: The Female Gentleman. Rosemary Erickson Johnsen

Peter Baker and Deborah Shaller, eds. Detecting Detection: International Perspectives on the Uses of a Plot. Mimosa Summers Stephenson

Clues 31.1: Hitchcock and adaptation.

"Hitchcock and Adaptation" is the theme of Clues 31.1 (2013), guest edited by Loyola Univ Maryland's Mark Osteen (author of Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream). The following is a summary of the contents (with links on the article titles). To order the issue or subscribe to Clues, visit this Web page or download the subscription flyer.

Introduction. MARK OSTEEN

Melancholy Elephants: Hitchcock and Ingenious Adaptation. KEN MOGG Alfred Hitchcock films such as Marnie and Young and Innocent represent a world that is equivocal. Highly ingenious and imaginative, they enable the spectator, much like the character Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest, to re-engage with that world and come “alive.”

"Inspiring Public Uneasiness": Hitchcock's Adaptation of Conrad's "Simple Tale." MATTHEW PAUL CARLSON (High Point Univ, NC) In Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936; adapted from Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, 1907), the director goes beyond mere use of the novel as a point of departure; he deeply engages its underlying anxieties about the artist’s relationship to his audience.

Reading Hitchcock/Reading Queer: Adaptation, Narrativity, and a Queer Mode of Address in Rope, Strangers on a Train, and Psycho. HEATH A. DIEHL (Bowling Green State Univ) Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951) reveal an interest in the odd; the peculiar; the “queer.” The author examines the narrative choices made in adaptation.

"Dear Miss Lonelyhearts": Voyeurism and the Spectacle of Human Suffering in Rear Window. NICHOLAS ANDREW MILLER (Loyola Univ Maryland) Rear Window offers a powerful meditation on the ethical implications of private voyeurism in the public sphere. The film draws thematic inspiration from Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts.

"The Proper Geography": Hitchcock's Adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds." JOHN BRUNS (College of Charleston) Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” illuminates the technical aspects of his process of adaptation, much-ignored similarities between du Maurier’s text and Hitchcock’s film, and the anxiogenics of spatial dislocation.

Hitchcock's Diegetic Imagination: Thornton Wilder, Shadow of a Doubt, and Hitchcock's Mise-en-Scene. DONNA KORNHABER (UT-Austin) The author considers the collaboration between Thornton Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and examines the influence of Wilder’s theories of theatrical abstraction and cinematic realism on Hitchcock’s developing sense of mise-en-scène.

The Second Look, the Second Death: W. G. Sebald's Orphic Adaptation of Hitchcock's Vertigo. R. J. A. KILBOURN (Wilfred Laurier Univ, Canada) This essay compares W. G. Sebald’s novel Vertigo (1991) and Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo. The book extends key themes and formal strategies in the film, most notably Hitchcock’s famous “vertigo shot.”

Adapting Poe, Adapting Hitchcock: Robert Bloch in the Shadow of Hitchcock's Television Empire. DENNIS R. PERRY and CARL H. SEDERHOLM (both Brigham Young Univ) Alfred Hitchcock’s television programs challenged adaptors to transfer his style and persona to the small screen. Robert Bloch invoked his own and Hitchcock’s deep interest in Poe to create episodes that tended to be more dark, ironic, and psychologically edgy than others.

Extraordinary Renditions: DeLillo's Point Omega and Hitchcock's Psycho. MARK OSTEEN Tracing how Don DeLillo’s novella rings changes on the word rendition, the author unravels a skein of intertextual and metacinematic relations that stretches from Psycho to Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho video installation, Robert Bloch’s original novel, and the many Psycho remakes.

REVIEWS
Susan M. Griffin and Alan Nadel, eds. The Men Who Knew Too Much: Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock. PAMELA BEDORE

R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, eds. Hitchcock at the Source: The Auteur as Adaptor. JOHN TEEL

Chandler to Hitchcock, Strangers on a Train.

Farley Granger (left) and
Robert Walker
Strangers on a Train (1951)

In time for today's birthday of Patricia Highsmith: Letters of Note features a stormy letter from Raymond Chandler to Alfred Hitchcock regarding Chandler's screenplay of Strangers on a Train.

Patricia Highsmith on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Encore.

Dean Stockwell in "Annabel"
Alfred Hitchcock Hour

A quadruple whammy in this week's episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour on Encore: "Annabel" is adapted from This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith, the screenplay is by Robert Bloch (Psycho), the star is Dean Stockwell, and the director is Paul Henreid. (It also can be viewed via YouTube.)

Patricia Highsmith's pseudonym.

Carmela Ciuraru's short piece on noms de plume in the Literarian discusses Patricia Highsmith's pseudonym of Carol Morgan and Alice Sheldon's alter ego—sci-fi's James Tiptree Jr.

Patricia Highsmith biography on WAMC.

On WAMC's The Book Show Joan Schenkar discusses her biography The Talented Miss Highsmith.

Highsmith, Dibdin, Higgins, Leonard in British Library Sound Archive.

A quick browse through the British Library Sound Archive uncovered these audio nuggets (in Windows Media files; Mac users need a program such as Flip4Mac to listen to these):

• Michael Dibdin interviews Patricia Highsmith on the occasion of the publication of Ripley Under Water, Sept. 27, 1991. In the interview, Highsmith discusses Tom Ripley and Strangers on a Train. She also mentions that the German translation of Ripley Under Water sold 35,000 copies on the first day of release.

• George V. Higgins talks about his novel Penance for Jerry Kennedy, May 8, 1985.

• Elmore Leonard discusses his novel Maximum Bob, Sept. 18, 1991.

• Panel on the European crime novel, Nov. 28, 1992, with Michael Dibdin and Susan Moody (UK), Laura Grimaldi (Italy), and Fernando Martinez Lainez (Spain).

Triple-whammy birthday.

Today's three birthdays reflect the immense diversity in and richness of the mystery field.

Tormented genius Edgar Allan Poe was born today in Boston in 1809.

Strangers on a Train author Patricia Highsmith (and the creator of the creepy Mr. Ripley) was born today in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921.

Patricia Moyes, the creator of sleuths Henry and Emmy Tibbett, was born today in 1923 in Ireland and died in 2000. A one-time assistant to Peter Ustinov and a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War II, she published 19 mysteries with the Tibbetts, including Johnny Under Ground (1965), in which a corpse discovered at an abandoned World War II airfield has implications for both past and present. She received an Edgar for Many Deadly Returns (1970).