Nefarious professors: BYU's guide to (fictional) campus crime.

Edith (Lent) Taylor,
Buffalo creative writing teacher
and author of
The Serpent under It (1973)
Swarthmore Class of 1935

Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library has just updated its annotated bibliography on "colleges, universities or professors in murder mystery fiction." Although limited at present to materials available at BYU that were published before 2001, it may be useful to those who enjoy mysteries set in academia.

The expected authors are covered (e.g., Robert Barnard, Amanda Cross, Helen Eustis, Michael Innes, Jane Langton, Dorothy L. Sayers), as well as lesser known names and authors with unexpected academic milieus (e.g., Helen McCloy, David Frome, Emma Lathen, Richard and Frances Lockridge, Peter Lovesey, Gladys Mitchell, S. S. Van Dine, Hillary Waugh).

Robert Barnard on Anton Chekhov.

The multitalented author Robert Barnard, who died on September 19 at age 76, wrote this perceptive Spectator review in 2004 of a new translation of Chekhov's The Shooting Party (1884–85), noting that it is "awash with tricks of the detective-story trade" and that ". . . the characters appear trapped by the sheer weight of ordinariness surrounding them. They are like mice scurrying around in a cage, as step by step the murder becomes inevitable."

I hope the listing of Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as 1962 really means 1926; Barnard as the author of A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie surely would have had this detail correct. Listen to my April 2006 interview with Barnard here, when his novel Dying Flames was released. We also had fun talking about his first novel, Death of an Old Goat.

Josephine Tey on Why I Really Like This Book.

The latest entry in Kate Macdonald's Why I Really Like This Book podcast discusses Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes (earlier entries in this series are on Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise and T. H. White's Darkness at Pemberley). Note that the Touchstone edition of Miss Pym Disposes is introduced by Robert Barnard.

Joyce Porter on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

The untidy Inspector Wilfred Dover of British mystery writer Joyce Porter is featured this week on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Go here for the schedule or to listen online; episodes generally may be heard for up to a week after broadcast. Several of Porter's mysteries have been reprinted (introduction to the Dover short story collection by Robert Barnard).