McFarland bk sale (incl Companions to Mystery Fiction).

It's a good time to buy volumes in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit; there's a 40-percent off sale on all McFarland books running through November 27, 2023 (use coupon code HOLIDAY23).

Clues 40.1: Historical crime fiction.

Volume 40, no. 1 (2022) of Clues: A Journal of Detection—a theme issue on historical crime fiction guest edited by Rosemary Erickson Johnsen—has been published. The issue abstracts follow below; contact McFarland to order a print copy. 

Update, May 1, 2022. The ebook versions of the issue are now available: Kindle, Nook, Google Play

We are happy to have the essay of professor emeritus Fred Erisman, who was a contributor to the first issue of Clues in 1980. Unfortunately, I do not have an update on our Ukrainian contributor who had to flee her town due to Russian bombing.

Historical Crime Fiction: A Cushion on the Seat
ROSEMARY ERICKSON JOHNSEN (Governors State Univ)
The guest editor of Clues 40.1 on historical crime fiction provides a brief history of related scholarship and discusses post–WWI India-set series by Massey and Mukherjee as representative of emerging trends. She previews the issue's articles on mysteries set in China, India, Latin America, Ukraine, and the United States.

Editor’s Note
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice–CUNY/CUNY Graduate Center)

Caroline Reitz, the executive editor of Clues, discusses two essays that appear in Clues 40.1 and a new call for submissions on pedagogy.

Rebecca Harding Davis and Early Women’s Detective Fiction
ALICIA MISCHA RENFROE (Middle Tennessee State Univ)

In Peterson’s Magazine, Rebecca Harding Davis developed one of American fiction’s earliest recurring detective figures in several mysteries that foreground the antebellum South as a historical setting. These stories illustrate the genre’s productive intersection with the gothic, destabilize narratives of the past, and complicate the detective’s traditional role in restoring social order. 


Hardball Speaks to Our Hard Times
MARGARET J. OAKES (Furman Univ)

The settings of Sara Paretsky’s Hardball are Chicago’s glittering but decrepit political scene in the late 2000s and an open housing march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 that became volatile and violent. Hardball’s instructional text shows the contemporary consequences of systemic racism stemming from Jim Crow laws, the development of police power, and waves of immigration.

Investigating Mexico’s History with Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Detective Héctor Belascoarán Shayne: On Which Side Are You?
PATRICIA VARAS (Willamette Univ)

This essay examines Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s approach to history as an effort to capture or rewrite well-known yet forgotten episodes in Mexican history. By retelling the 1971 Corpus Christi student massacre, channeling Pancho Villa’s ghost, and recovering Aztec artifacts in his novels, he ensures that his readers will not forget this history, providing a controversial insight into today’s Mexico.

Ukrainian Hero and the Habsburg Monarchy:
Retro Visions in Contemporary Ukrainian Historical Detective Fiction
SOFIYA FILONENKO (Berdyansk State Pedagogical Univ)

The series by contemporary Ukrainian writer Bogdan Kolomiychuk presents the adventures of police officer Adam Vistovych in Lviv (aka Lemberg). The author’s depiction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early-twentieth century and its colony—Ukraine—highlights the social, political, national, and historical aspects of the mystery genre.

“The Truth Is Rarely Pure and Never Simple”: 
The Kidnapping of Charley Ross in Fact and Fiction
PHYLLIS M. BETZ (La Salle Univ)

This article compares the differences between Carrie Hagen’s nonfiction reconstruction of the 1874 kidnapping of Charley Ross and Mark Graham’s use of this event in his historical mystery. The main emphasis is how details of the actual event are altered to fit the requirements of each narrative form.

The Transcultural Construction of a Historical Chinese Murder Case: The Ninefold Murder
SABRINA YUAN HAO (Guangdong Univ of Foreign Studies)

This article explores the cross-cultural adaptations of a historical Chinese murder case. Focusing on three key texts published by An He in 1809, Wu Jianren in 1904, and Robert van Gulik in 1958, it investigates the potential of historicity to be used by authors of crime fiction to address concerns of their own times.

Abir Mukherjee’s Historical Crime Novels and the Contemporary Postcolonial
MOLLY SLAVIN (Georgia Inst of Technology)

Abir Mukherjee’s historical crime novels set in the British Raj interrogate colonial structures of violence. The author argues that Mukherjee uses these novels to riff on Golden Age detective novel tropes and communicate knowledge about imperialism, history, and postcolonialism to mass market detective novel readers in the twenty-first-century.

The Cultural Ideology of the Great War–Haunted British Detective in Historical Crime Fiction
MARZENA SOKOŁOWSKA-PARYŻ (Univ of Warsaw)

This article examines the cultural ideology underlying the constructions of the war-haunted detective in the historical crime fiction series by Rennie Airth, Jonathan Hicks, Charles Todd, and Jacqueline Winspear. These (re)imaginings of the Great War demonstrate the capacity of this literary genre to perpetuate the futility myth in the contemporary cultural memory of the 1914–18 British experience.

ESSAYS
Time and Detective Novels: Exploring the Past and the Night in Ian Rankin’s John Rebus Series

IAN R. COOK (Northumbia Univ)
Given that time is an important theme within detective novels, this article explores the portrayal of time in Ian Rankin’s John Rebus series. More precisely, it draws on the concepts of temporality and relationality to critically examine two important temporal dimensions in the series: the past and the night.

Dick Francis and the Fine Arts
FRED ERISMAN (Texas Christian Univ)
Apart from P. D. James with Adam Dalgleish, mystery authors have rarely used an artist as their protagonist. Between 1972 and 2000, Dick Francis wrote seven such books, contrasting the artist’s world with the professional detective’s and exploring ways in which art equips the amateur to be as effective a crime-solving entity as the professional.

REVIEWS
Donald K. Hartman, Ed. The Hypno-Ripper
 ELYSSA WARKENTIN
 (Univ of Manitoba)

Steven Powell, Ed. The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy’s Noir World
 DEIRDRE CONDIT
 (Virginia Commonwealth Univ)

Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King, and Andrew Pepper, Eds. The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction
 ROSA HARO FERNÁNDEZ (Univ of Málaga)

Phyllis M. Betz, Ed. Reading the Cozy Mystery: Critical Essays on an Underappreciated Subgenre
 PAMELA BEDORE (Univ of Connecticut–Avery Point)

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.

Paretsky to receive Fuller Award.

On May 9 at the Newberry Library, Sara Paretsky will receive the Fuller Award for lifetime achievement from the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. The event is free and open to the public.

Paretsky on Green and more.

The winter 2018 issue of the University of Chicago Magazine features "Criminal Mastermind," an article on alumnus Sara Paretsky, in which she talks about her role in the mystery world as "the aging diva," the work of Anna Katharine Green, and her experiences as a student at the university. Says Paretsky, "Crime fiction is the place in literature where law and justice in society come together."

McFarland's holiday sale.

In a holiday sale, McFarland is offering a 30 percent discount on two or more books ordered from its new true crime and mystery catalog. These include the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit.

Paretsky companion published.

Just published is Sara Paretsky: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction (vol. 7 of the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series) by MWA Raven recipient Margaret Kinsman. I edit the series. Goodies abound in this in-depth analysis of Paretsky's groundbreaking detective V. I. Warshawski and other subjects in the author's fiction and nonfiction works, including Margaret's discussion of Paretsky's first published piece (which she wrote at age 11).

Religion and fictional detectives.

G.K. Chesterton

A recent article by Bill Phillips (University of Barcelona) is on "Religious Belief in Recent Detective Fiction." Some of the authors mentioned are Ken Bruen, James Lee Burke, G. K. Chesterton, Sara Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, and Ian Rankin.

First modern female PI in US mysteries.

Read my letter in the December 7 Washington Post regarding the first modern female private investigator in American mystery fiction (sorting out the debuts of Delilah West, Sharon McCone, V.I. Warshawski, and Kinsey Millhone).

The Guardian talks to Sara Paretsky.

The Guardian's Claire Armistead talks to Sara Paretsky about V. I. Warshawski's latest appearance here.

Ellis Peters, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sara Paretsky this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week on BBC Radio 7: Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael in Dead Man's Ransom; a rebroadcast of Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley's Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters; and Sara Paretsky's Bitter Medicine. Go here for the schedule or to listen.

My 2 minutes of fame.

I was a bit startled to see that, uploaded on the Library of Congress's YouTube Channel, is the Center for the Book presentation by Sara Paretsky that coincided with the winter 2007 Clues theme issue on her work. Yours truly shows up at the end.

(Also check out this LOC presentation by Washington Post Book World columnist Michael Dirda. Dirda is a big fan of, among others, John Dickson Carr, H. Rider Haggard, Georgette Heyer, and Philip K. Dick.)

Sara Paretsky: Competition for Denyce Graves?

The University of Chicago Magazine blog provides an account (with photos) of the annual Revels that starred alumnus Sara Paretsky as "evil Big Pharm CEO Stacy Starkweather," including Paretsky singing a modified version of an aria from Tosca.

Sara Paretsky this week on BBC Radio 7.

V. I. Warshawski is featured this week on BBC Radio 7 in "Deadlock" and "A Hero's Death." Go here for the schedule or to listen.

Audio clips of Sara Paretsky, Laura Lippman, Valerie Wilson Wesley.

Over at Chicago's Open Books Radio, there is new audio posted from interviews with Sara Paretsky and Laura Lippman by Booklist's Donna Seaman. Other interviews of potential interest include Valerie Wilson Wesley.

V. I. Warshawski this week on BBC Radio 7.

Sara Paretsky's Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski appears this Thursday and Friday on BBC Radio 7 in "Publicity Stunts" (from V.I. x 2). Go here for the schedule or to listen.

Happy birthday, Sara Paretsky.

Sara Paretsky, creator of groundbreaking private investigator V. I. Warshawski, turns 60 today.

I've already posted here regarding the winter 2007 Clues issue on Paretsky and her February Library of Congress lecture on the occasion of V.I.'s 25th anniversary. A new collection of nonfiction essays, Writing in an Age of Silence, has been published by Verso; more here about that.

V.I. Warshawski at 25

A February 27th presentation by Sara Paretsky at the Library of Congress, reflecting on 25 years of her P.I. character V.I. Warshawski, is now online here.

This event was cosponsored by Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and presented in conjunction with the winter 2007 issue on Paretsky of Clues: A Journal of Detection.

John Y. Cole, director of the LOC's Center for the Book, introduces Paretsky, and I provide some remarks at the end.