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.

Arcturus Publishing's mystery reissues in Oct.

Reissued this month by Arcturus Publishing are Patricia Moyes's Johnny Under Ground (with a compelling World War II plot line) and Francis Durbridge's Tim Frazer Again (with Frazer on the trail of a woman who is suspected of killing a government agent).

McCloy, Moyes, and White reissued.

Among the books just reissued in the Arcturus Crime Classics series:

• MWA Grand Master Helen McCloy, Through a Glass, Darkly (1950). A doppelganger means trouble for a teacher and psychiatrist Basil Willing. The New York Times deemed it one of the best mysteries of 1950. Wrote Dorothy B. Hughes about the book in the Dec. 3, 1950, Washington Post, "Not since the late Bayard Veiller's 'Bait for a Tiger' has this reader been filled with such actual fear by a printed page."

• Patricia Moyes, Who Saw Her Die? (aka Many Deadly Returns, 1970). In this Edgar-nominated novel, Detective Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett must figure out how a widow died.

• Ethel Lina White, Some Must Watch (1933). A killer preys on vulnerable women in this novel by the author of The Lady Vanishes that was adapted as Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase. 

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).