The subversive Black Narcissus (1947).

Kathleen Byron in
Black Narcissus

In a BBC Radio 3 essay, critic Peter Bradshaw provides an astute appreciation of what he calls the "subversive" film of Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947).

Heyer's The Reluctant Widow (1950).

A former governess encounters spies employed by Napoleon in this adaptation of Georgette Heyer's novel (alternate film title: The Inheritance). Kathleen Byron (best known for Black Narcissus) is featured.

Lots of mystery goodies this week on BBC Radio 7.

All sorts of mystery goodies this week on BBC Radio 7:

• G. K. Chesterton's wise Father Brown appears in  "The Arrow of Heaven" (from The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926), "The Mistake of the Machine" (from The Wisdom of Father Brown, 1914), "The Curse of the Golden Cross" (from The Incredulity of Father Brown), "The Actor and the Alibi" (from The Secret of Father Brown, 1927), and "The Absence of Mr. Glass" (from The Wisdom of Father Brown).

• Nuns experience strange passions in the Himalayas in Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus (1939).

• The late Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey investigates a corpse in an East Anglian church in Dorothy L. Sayers's The Nine Tailors (1934).

• Young Emil attempts to track down his stolen money in an adaptation of Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives (1930).

Go here for the schedule; episodes can usually be heard online for a week after broadcast.

About the image: David Farrar in Black Narcissus (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Happy birthday, Rumer Godden and Philip R. Craig.

British author Rumer Godden, perhaps best known for the disturbing Black Narcissus that was made into the 1947 Powell and Pressburger film starring Deborah Kerr, marks her centenary today. She died in 1998.

And Philip R. Craig, who created former cop and fishing aficionado J. W. Jackson, was born today in Santa Monica, California, in 1933. Craig died in May of this year. Third Strike, his last novel with William G. Tapply that pairs Jackson with Tapply's lawyer Brady Coyne, has just been published.