Film Music Friday: Whodunits.

Edward G. Robinson in
The Red House (1947)

The latest episode of Kansas Public Radio's Film Music Friday focuses on whodunits. Included is music from The Big Sleep (composer: Max Steiner), Chinatown (composer: Jerry Goldsmith), High and Low (composer: Masaru Sato), Knives Out (composer: Nathan Johnson), Murder on the Orient Express (composer: Richard Rodney Bennett), and The Red House (composer: Miklós Rózsa).

Upcoming Raymond Chandler graphic novel.

Penguin Random House will publish a graphic novel version of Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is My Business (1939) in May 2025 as part of the Pantheon Graphic Library. The creative team is writer Arvind Ethan David, illustrator Ilias Kyriazis, and colorist Cris Peter. In the novella, Philip Marlowe is hired by a female private detective to disentangle a gangster's moll from a rich man's son.

New French translations of Chandler.

Just published in Gallimard's distinguished and long-running Série Noire are new French translations of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake and The Big Sleep.

Chandler's CA locations.

The Security Pacific Bank Bldg, which
housed Marlowe's office as the
"Cahuenga Bldg." Wikimedia Commons.

Michele E. Buttelman in Santa Clarita Valley [CA]'s The Signal discusses "California Literary Locations," which include the office site of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Musso & Frank Grill (mentioned in The Long Goodbye), and the Greystone Mansion (possibly the model for General Sternwood's estate in The Big Sleep).

Clues 40.2: Columbo, Chandler, Christie, Dexter, Ms. Fisher, Teaching Forum, and more.

Clues 40.2 (2022) has been published, featuring its first Teaching Forum—this one on teaching crime fiction after Black Lives Matter, engaging with issues such as race, gender, and class. As usual, we are delighted to have contributors from around the world. See below for abstracts. Contact McFarland for subscriptions or a print copy of the journal. 

Update, 12-30-22. The ebook versions of the issue are now available: Kindle, Nook, Google Play

Around the World Backwards and Forwards
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY/CUNY Graduate School)

Caroline Reitz, the executive editor of Clues, provides an overview of the issue, including articles on Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Columbo, Colin Dexter, contemporary European crime narratives, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, forensic psychiatrists in crime fiction, Deon Meyer, Ms. Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, and a forum on teaching crime fiction after Black Lives Matter.

Rethinking Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944/1946)
STEWART KING (Monash University, Australia)

This review article revisits Raymond Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder” and examines its ongoing relevance for crime fiction studies. It asks to what extent does Chandler’s iconic essay help us to understand and explain the crime genre, both historically and today.

Intersecting Crime: South African State Capture and the Hero-Criminal Binary in Deon Meyer’s The Last Hunt (2019) / SAM NAIDU (Rhodes University, South Africa)

Deon Meyer’s The Last Hunt can be categorized as African noir in its themes of political disillusionment, corruption, and crimes of the state against its citizens, shedding light on contemporary African-European relations. The article examines the novel’s intersections of time, space, national, and transnational with criminal and detective characters, and the blurriness of the hero-criminal binary.

Contemporary European Crime Narratives: “Euro-Glocal”?
THEO D’HAEN (University of Leiden, The Netherlands/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

The article makes a case for the emergence of a particularly European brand of crime fiction, film, and television series that fosters a closer European union.

“Mystery” Beyond Reason:
Mr. Quin, a Revealer of the Powers of Fiction According to Agatha Christie?
MARC VERVEL (Université de Paris, France)

The short story collection The Mysterious Mr. Quin has a special place in Agatha Christie’s work. In these stories where rational investigation opens up to the supernatural, Christie theorizes what is at stake in the desire to read and proposes an expanded conception of the detective story.

The Skeptical Poetics of Colin Dexter’s Morse Novels
MICHAL SÝKORA (Palacký University, Czech Republic)

This article argues that Detective Chief Inspector Morse is a different figure in Colin Dexter’s novels than the popular television series. The author locates Dexter’s novels in British postwar crime fiction, with attention to representations of the social reality of Oxford and gender issues, and reads The Wench Is Dead to argue Morse’s hermeneutic approach to investigation reveals an ironic skepticism about truth.

Colin Dexter’s Classicism / MATTHEW WRIGHT (University of Exeter, UK)

Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books, unlike any other detective novels, are saturated with references to Greek and Latin language and literature. This article explores the significance of Classics and classical scholarship in Dexter’s world and argues that the novels present a consistent (and consistently troubling) view of education and culture. 

Online exhibition, Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks.

The Phantom of the Opera by
Gaston Leroux, part of the
UNC Libraries exhibition

The UNC Libraries online exhibition "Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks" draws on the paperback collection of UNC Chapel Hill to assist instructors who wish to use such works in their classroom. Some sample lesson plans are provided. Mystery books include assorted works by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; The Blue Geranium by Dolan Birkley (aka Dolores Hitchens); The Couch by Robert Bloch; Honeymoon in Hell by Fredric Brown; Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis; A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard; I Married a Dead Man and other works by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich); and Sorry, Wrong Number by Allan Ullman and Lucille Fletcher (as the cover notes: "She Dialed .. D-E-A-T-H").

Covers by Tom Adams of Raymond Chandler.

Bookmaven on tumblr features 1970s covers by artist Tom Adams of various works by Raymond Chandler. Adams (1926–2019) was also known for his covers of Agatha Christie titles.

A 2016 collection of Tom Adams covers

 

Cover by Tom Adams of
Chandler's Pickup on Noon Street

"Mapping Fiction" exhibition, the Huntington.

The "Mapping Fiction" exhibition at Los Angeles' Huntington Library features the role of maps in fiction and is on view until May 2. It includes Loren Latker's "Shamus Town" map of the Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles and an orange crate label from Tarzana Hills (originally named in honor of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan).

Clues 39.2: Christie, Austen-Leigh, Robinson, Upfield, and more.

Volume 39, no. 2 (2021) of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published. The issue abstracts follow below; contact McFarland to order a print copy. 

Update, 12-12-21. Ebook versions of the issue are now available: Kindle, Nook, Google Play

Introduction: So Many Books, So Little Time

CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY/CUNY Graduate Center)

Caroline Reitz, the new executive editor of Clues, provides an overview of the issue, including articles on authors such as Lois Austen-Leigh, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Didier Daeninckx, Fergus Hume, Philip Kerr, Peter Robinson, and Arthur Upfield.

Australian Rules: Forensic Culture in the Fiction of Arthur W. Upfield
BETTY J. BRUTHER
Four novels in Arthur W. Upfield’s Napoleon Bonaparte series—Winds of Evil (1937), Death of a Swagman (1946), The Widows of Broome (1950), and The Bachelors of Broken Hill (1950)—deal with multiple murders committed by a single individual in the outback. Each novel reveals the forensic culture of Australia: common investigative techniques, criminal profiling, forensic psychology, and the examination and interpretation of temporary trace evidence on the landscape.

Murder Most Incidental: Arthur Upfield’s Death of a Lake (1954)
RACHEL FRANKS AND ALISTAIR ROLLS
 (University of Newcastle)
Arthur Upfield is well-known for positioning an Aboriginal detective, Inspector Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte, as the protagonist for his series. In Death of a Lake (1954), Upfield challenges the conventions of mid-twentieth-century Australian crime stories not only through privileging an Indigenous man but also through disregarding the central concept of the modern crime novel: murder.

The Mysteries of the Colonial Metropolis: Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and 
Donald Cameron’s Mysteries of Melbourne Life
ORLA DONNELLY ((Trinity College Dublin)
Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886) and Donald Cameron’s Mysteries of Melbourne Life (1873) follow the tradition of urban crime writing. This essay examines three essential elements in these Melbourne crime novels: the treatment of crime and detection, the themes of physical and social mobility, and the exoticized images of urban street folk.

Death in a Literary Context: Detective Novels of the Golden Age as Enacted Criticism
ANDREW GREEN (Brunel University)
This article explores the nature of Golden Age crime narrative. It argues that the works of these authors are “enacted criticism”—creative acts that are fundamentally critical responses to genre—that can be read as mutually constitutive meaning-making “spaces”—texts within which form is constantly renegotiated within a literary context.

Clue-Burying and Misdirection-Making in Peter Robinson’s When the Music’s Over (2016)
CHRISTIANA GREGORIOU (University of Leeds)
Close stylistic inspection of detective novel writing can shed light on the skill of weighing up interpretations. In When the Music’s Over, Robinson relies on readers’ schematic expectations, stereotypes, and prejudices to generate false leads and bury a killer into the narrative background until his significance needs to be foregrounded.

Writing History into Fiction in Didier Daeninckx’s Meurtres pour mémoire
JOHN GLEESON
This article demonstrates Didier Daeninckx’s unique blending of historical fact and fiction, particularly the use of state archives in his breakthrough novel Meurtres pour mémoire (1984). It also examines intertextual references to nineteenth-century writers and the French New Wave cinema that expand the traditional boundaries of the genre.

History Detective: Reading the Weimar Republic in Philip Kerr’s Last Novel Metropolis (2019)
NEIL H. DONAHUE (Hofstra University)
Philip Kerr’s last novel Metropolis (2019) returns his detective, Bernie Gunther, to 1928 as both prequel and epilogue to his series of 14 novels. This essay locates the key to Gunther’s identity and actions in his relation to arch-Nazi Arthur Nebe.


The illustrated Raymond Chandler.

On Creative Boom, Emily Gosling discusses an illustrated Chinese edition of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (some illustrations from the book included in the post). The artist is Klaus Kremmerz.

Hard-boiled detectives and libraries.

Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart)
meets a librarian from the Hollywood Public
Library (Carole Douglas) in the trailer to
The Big Sleep (1946)

Peter Igelström, librarian at Linköping University's Valla Library, takes an entertaining look at the relationship of hardboiled detectives to libraries and librarians. "One wonders why the library is a potential stigma to a hard-boiled detective," he states.

Philip Marlowe via Australia.

A radio series in Australia, Philip Marlowe Investigates, was broadcast in 1953 starring Australian actor-writer-producer Reginald Goldsworthy as Marlowe. Episode 1 was "The Lady in the Lake," and episode 2 was "The High Window." Below is "The Lady in the Lake." The American accents are fairly proficient.

NFSA · Philip Marlowe, Eps 1 The lady in the Lake (1953)

BFI choices, works with cinema and mystery.

"Flick Lit" presents recommendations by the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound contributors of 100 novels that deal with cinema. The piece states that George R. Sims's "Our Detective Story" (1897) is the "earliest crime drama involving film."

The following mystery-related works are included:

• No. 24: The Director's Cut, by Nicholas Royle
• No. 30: Fear in the Sunlight, by Nicola Upson
• No. 32: Flicker, by Theodore Roszak 
• No. 37: The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
• No. 40: L.A. Confidential, by James Ellroy
• No. 47: The Little Sister, by Raymond Chandler
• No. 55: Missing Reels, by Farran Smith Nehme

Chandler in World War I.

In the Smart Set, Benjamin Welton discusses Raymond Chandler's service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and short-lived time in the RAF in World War I.

Further reading:
• Chandler's Canadian WWI service record (notes his status as a "naturalized British citizen" and includes his description of himself as a journalist. Fans may be amused by the mistake in his medical exam record, in which his first name is rendered as "Reginald.")

Chandler's signature from his Canadian discharge papers.

Clues 36.2: Atkinson, Conan Doyle, Chandler, Hammett, Macdonald, and a noir graphic novel.

Vol. 36, no. 2 (2018), of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published. Contact McFarland to order the issue or a subscription. For e-versions: visit the Kindle link, the Nook link, or the Google Play link).

To keep up to date on Clues, subscribe to the new RSS feed for the Clues tables of contents, or visit the Clues website. There is currently a call for papers on interwar mysteries (submission deadline: October 12, 2018).

Introduction  JANICE M. ALLAN (Univ of Salford)

Transvestism and Transgender in the Crime Fiction of Andrea G. Pinketts BARBARA PEZZOTTI (Monash Univ)
This article focuses on the figure of the transvestite and the treatment of transgender in the novels of Italian crime writer Andrea G. Pinketts. The aim is to determine whether Pinketts’s highly entertaining, parodic hard-boiled series succeeds in subverting a traditional discourse on transvestism and transgender in Italian crime fiction.

Bending the Genre: Portraying the Genders of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey in the Detective Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers SALLY BERESFORD-SHERIDAN (Univ of Waterloo)
This essay explores how the fictional female detective of Dorothy L. Sayers works outside normative gender conventions of the interwar years. By positing a female character who can become a detective, Sayers allows both Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey to break and redefine social expectations of masculine behaviors, feminine behaviors, and gender stereotypes.

Cherchez la Femme: A Good Woman’s Place in Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction KELI MASTEN (Western Michigan Univ)
Hard-boiled detective fiction often limits women to the roles of femme fatale or love interest of the detective. However, Effie Perine (Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon) and Anne Riordan (Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely) embody the femme fiable (“dependable woman”), a survivor who goes where the detective cannot and avoids the fate of the femme fatale.

Real locations of LA noir.

Inside Hook discusses with Jim Heimann his new book Dark City: The Real Los Angeles Noir, which features photographs of the real-life locations that inspired writers (such as that pertaining to the Black Dahlia case and those used by Raymond Chandler).

BFI's lists on "perfect crime" and noir films.

From an ad for The Killing (1956)

One of the latest lists on the British Film Institute blog is on "10 Great Films on Committing the Perfect Crime." These include The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Les Diaboliques (1954), Lift to the Scaffold (1958), The Killing (1956), and Thief (1981).

Another is a list of "10 Great American Film Noirs." Among expected entries (The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Laura) are The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and The Reckless Moment (based on Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's The Blank Wall, 1949).

Hammett, Chandler, and the Writers Guild.

Ad for Mister Dynamite (1935)

In the Writers Guild Foundation's online On the Shoulders of Giants: Early Writers Guild History are the following goodies:

• Dashiell Hammett's 1935 membership application (his screen credit of the past three years is listed as Mister Dynamite [1935], which is an adaptation of his "On the Make"). The page after Hammett's application is Lillian Hellman's application.

• Cover of the guild's July 1947 The Screen Writer, which lists Raymond Chandler's "Critical Notes" that critique the contents of the May 1947 issue. One of his observations (in response to an article by Joseph L. Mankiewitz) is "I do not think a writer has to become a producer or director to be an independent artist . . . there is a cleavage between the creative art of writing and the arts of directing and producing..." (31). The July 1947 issue also has "Writing and Realization" by Meyer Levin (author of the Leopold and Loeb-inspired Compulsion) about a film in Palestine that involved him.

The foundation also has posted "The Top 20 Best Written TV Series." No. 15 is Hill Street Blues, no. 9 is The Wire, no. 3 is The Twilight Zone, and no. 1 is The Sopranos.

Tom Williams on Chandler's life and work.

In part 1 of a two-part episode of the podcast The Soul of California, author Tom Williams (A Mysterious Something in the Light) discusses influences on Raymond Chandler's life and work with podcast host Richard Dion.

Update: Part 2 of the podcast (which discusses Chandler's classic essay "The Simple Art of Murder" and the portrayal of Philip Marlowe) is now posted.

The Unseen (1945).

Publicity photo for
The Unseen

Ethel Lina White's Her Heart in Her Throat (1942) was adapted as The Unseen, with July 23rd birthday boy Raymond Chandler as a  screenwriter. In The Unseen, governess Gail Russell suspects that nefarious activities are going on in the neighborhood and wonders about the role of her employer, shipbuilder Joel McCrea, in his wife's death. Herbert Marshall and Norman Lloyd costar. The film, an attempt by director Lewis Allen to follow up The Uninvited (1944, also with Russell), has some echoes of Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw."