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This essay examines “Faith,” a short story by Dashiell Hammett unpublished in his lifetime, exploring its relationship to detective fiction, proletarian fiction, and literary modernism.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 Silence of Snow: The Life of Patrick Hamilton.

Various venues will be hosting The Silence of Snow: The Life of Patrick Hamilton, a one-man show with actor Mark Farrelly as the talented but troubled playwright-author of works such as Rope, Angel Street (aka Gaslight), and Hangover Square. 

• Petersfield Museum (Petersfield, UK), Apr. 17, 2025 

• Hope Mill Theatre (Manchester, UK), Apr. 25–26, 2025

• The Swallow Theatre (Whithorn, Scotland), Oct. 3–4, 2025

• Interview with Mark Farrelly

Victorian gaslighting roundtable, Sept. 5.

The Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States will hold a Victorian gaslighting roundtable on Zoom on Thursday, September 5, at 11 a.m. Pacific time (2 p.m. Eastern time). Presenters will discuss various examples of gaslighting in Victorian literature and culture (many probably know the term for this form of psychological manipulation stems from Patrick Hamilton's play Angel Street, aka Gaslight, adapted as a 1944 film). Advance registration is required.

 

Jan 31 app deadline, UT-Austin Ransom Center.

Baroness Orczy, from the
May 26, 1906
San Francisco Call

The application deadline for research fellowships at UT-Austin's Harry Ransom Center is Jan. 31. Fellowships range from 1 to 3 months and from $1200 to $3000 for individuals who need to consult the center's collections (including those working on dissertations). Its mystery collections include the Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian Collection; correspondence from Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Patrick Hamilton, and Edgar Allan Poe; and manuscripts of J. S. Fletcher, Dashiell Hammett, A. E. W. Mason, Beverley Nichols, and Baroness Orczy.

More on Patrick Hamilton: Hangover Square.

Coinciding with Patrick Hamilton's birthday on March 17, BBC Radio 4's A Good Read program discusses Hamilton's Hangover Square (1941). Although noting that it often is not the most comfortable book to read, the commentators admire Hamilton's insights into psychology and obsession. (Below: The trailer to Hangover Square [1945], with Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, and George Sanders).

Happy birthday, Patrick Hamilton.

Playwright and author Patrick Hamilton was born today in Hassocks, Sussex, United Kingdom, in 1904. He died in 1962. In mysterydom, he is best known for his plays Rope, with certain parallels to the Leopold and Loeb case (1929; filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) and Gaslight (1939, aka Angel Street; films 1940, 1944, 1947, and several TV adaptations). He also wrote the novel Hangover Square (1941; filmed by John Brahm, 1945). The TV series The Charmer, with Nigel Havers as con artist Ralph Gorse, was based on Hamilton's Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953). Faber Finds has reissued his Twopence Coloured (1928) and Impromptu in Moribundia (1939).

Mystery goodies on EUscreen.

EUscreen offers free online access to thousands of videos, stills, and other materials from European broadcasters. A quick tiptoe through the archives yielded the following:

• An August 1962 interview with Alfred Hitchcock regarding The Birds (in French and English) in which he refutes the idea of working with Grace Kelly again ("Ce n'est pas possible")

• On location in Ireland in 1966 for the film Casino Royale with John Huston and Deborah Kerr

• Two interviews (in French) with Georges Simenon (1959, 1967)

• A July 1958 interview (in French) with Leslie Charteris, creator of the Saint

• Still from a 1955 Dutch TV production of Gaslight

(Thanks to Critical Studies in Television)

FaberFinds reissues Patrick Hamilton.

George Sanders in
Hangover Square (1945)

FaberFinds has reissued Patrick Hamilton's Twopence Coloured (1928), an indictment of the world of the theater. In mysterydom Hamilton (1904–62) is best known for his plays Rope (1929; filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) and Gaslight (1939, aka Angel Street; films 1940, 1944, 1947, and several TV adaptations), as well as the novel Hangover Square (1941; filmed by John Brahm, 1945). The TV series The Charmer, with Nigel Havers as con artist Ralph Gorse, was based on Hamilton's Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953).

Patrick Hamilton redux: Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse.

George Simmers on the Great War Fiction blog has another look at the presence of WWI in Patrick Hamilton's work after Rope—this time in Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953) and Unknown Assailant (1955), part of Hamilton's Gorse trilogy. Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse was adapted for television as The Charmer (1987) starring Nigel Havers as con man Ralph Gorse, and one of the blog commenters notes that Gorse is believed to be based on murderer Neville Heath.

About the image: Nigel Havers in The Charmer (dir. Alan Gibson)

Patrick Hamilton's Rope and World War I.

On the Great War Fiction blog, George Simmers discusses the World War I background to Patrick Hamilton's Rope, the 1929 play based on the Leopold and Loeb case, which was later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. The play is on stage again at London's Almeida Theater.

About the image: John Dall and Farley Granger in Rope (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1948).