Homes of local mystery writers.

The website DC Writers' Homes—a project of Humanities DC—features residences of such writers as James M. Cain (6707 44th Ave, University Park, MD), Roald Dahl (2136 R St NW in DC), Rudolph Fisher (1607 S St NW in DC), Lucille Fletcher (3435 8th St S, Arlington, VA), Mary Roberts Rinehart (2419 Massachusetts Ave NW and 2660 Woodley Rd in DC), and Manley Wade Wellman (400 Shepherd St NW in DC).

Mary Roberts Rinehart with chauffeur outside her
home at 2419 Massachusetts Ave NW in
Washington, DC (now the Embassy of Zambia).
ca. 1920s-early 1930s. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division

NEH's Edsitement: Not much mystery.

Theodore Dreiser, NYPL

The National Endowment for the Humanities' Edsitement offers K–12 lesson plans in literature, but I wish the site had beefier mystery-related content (at minimum, including some plans on teaching Alcott's thrillers, Conan Doyle, Christie, Hammett, and Chandler, not to mention black writers Rudolph Fisher and Chester Himes. How about something on teaching Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy?). The only somewhat related plans I can find are on Hemingway's Nick Adams and two lesson plans on Poe. Although Faulkner is included, there is nothing on his mystery-related work (such as Intruder in the Dust, "A Rose for Emily," and his Gavin Stevens stories).

Happy birthday, Rudolph Fisher.

New York City, 1924. From left to right:
Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson,
E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher,
Hubert T. Delaney. NYPL.

Rudolph Fisher—physician, Harlem Renaissance figure, and author of The Conjure- Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem (1932)—was born today in Washington, DC, in 1897. He died in 1934. The Conjure-Man Dies is commonly believed to be the first mystery novel by an African American, but Marlena Bremseth argues persuasively that Philip S. Warne preceded Fisher. Author and professor Frankie Y. Bailey recently wrote a Clues article that compares the Harlem of Conjure-Man to that of Chester Himes in A Rage in Harlem.

Clues 28.1 published: Chester Himes.

Just published is vol. 28, no. 1 of Clues: A Journal of Detection, which is a theme issue on the work of Chester Himes (1909–84) to honor his centenary. Norlisha F. Crawford (University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh) guest edited the issue. Edgar nominee Frankie Y. Bailey (SUNY–Albany) compares Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies (1932) to Himes's A Rage in Harlem (1957); Justin Gifford (University of Nevada–Reno) examines Himes's Run Man Run (1959) in the context of black pulp publishing; Agustin Reyes-Torres (University of Valencia) compares Himes's Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones with Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins; and Stephen F. Soitos looks at Himes's use of tropes from African American folklore.

An exciting aspect of the issue is its reprint of "He Knew," a short story by Himes that has been out of print since 1933 and is his first work that features African American detectives. John Cullen Gruesser (Kean University, NJ) analyzes the story and discusses its place in the history of African American detective fiction.

Other essays in the issue compare Boris Akunin with Christie and Collins (Marcia A. Morris, Georgetown University); examine Anne Perry's World War I series (Barbara Korte, University of Freiburg); look at the language used in James Ellroy's Dudley Smith trilogy (Jon Clay, Richmond-on-Thames College); and analyze John le Carre's The Secret Pilgrim, his first novel to deal with the end of the cold war (Jonathan Goodwin, University of Louisiana at Lafayette). Edgar nominee Rita Rippetoe (author of Booze and the Private Eye) also reviews Edgar nominee Jean Murley's The Rise of True Crime: 20th-Century Murder and American Popular Culture.

Go here for the table of contents with article abstracts; here for more information about the journal.