The ABA's picks, 25 greatest law novels.

The Aug 2013 ABA Journal features the "25 Greatest Law Novels Ever." These include:

• An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser 
• Anatomy of a Murder, Robert Traver 
• Bleak House, Charles Dickens
• The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
• The Firm, John Grisham
• Native Son, Richard Wright
• The Ox-Bow Incident,
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
• The Paper Chase, John Jay Osborn Jr.
• Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow
• QB VII, Leon Uris
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Some judges wrote essays on notable omissions such as Michelle Zierler on In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and Roz Myers on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone novel The Just and the Unjust by James Gould Cozzens. As an admirer of Cozzens's prose, I would not call his style "fusty," as Myers does. I'm also startled that not one Erle Stanley Gardner novel has been selected. (thanks to the Law and Humanities blog)

What's next? A graphic-novel Perry Mason?

Nathaniel Burney provides a lively look at criminal law via a comics format in The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law; he talks about the book here. Sneak a peek at the upcoming follow-up, The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Procedure. These are probably destined as presents for the budding law school student, alongside of Scott Turow's One L. (thanks, Law & Humanities blog)

Now out: E. X. Ferrars companion (ed. Foxwell).

Just out is E. X. Ferrars: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Gina Macdonald with Elizabeth Sanders. This is volume 2 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit (volume 1 is on John Buchan; the Scots will be pleased that both volumes feature writers of Scottish heritage).

Detection Club member and British Crime Writers Assn cofounder Ferrars published her first book, Turn Single, in 1932, and the last, A Choice of Evils, in 1995. Her sleuths include physiotherapist Virginia Freer and her estranged, often feckless husband Felix and retired professor Andrew Basnett (who often poignantly grapples with the effects of aging). Some of her books are still in print with Langtail Press and Doubleday, and Doug Greene of Crippen and Landru plans a collection of her short stories. Very helpful with the book was Peter Mactaggart, Ferrars's nephew and literary executor, who provided the cover photo, manuscript excerpts (including one from an unpublished novel), and valuable insights on Ferrars's life. Readers may like the handy table that lists Ferrars's methods of murder and the works in which they appear.

George C. Scott, left, and
Angela Thornton in E. X. Ferrars's
"We Haven't Seen Her Lately,"
  Kraft Mystery Theatre
NBC, 20 Aug 1958

One fascinating aspect was her duel in print with sci-fi writer John Wyndham over the merits of mystery fiction vs. those of sci-fi.

Another intriguing discovery was "We Haven't Seen Her Lately," the 1958 Kraft Mystery Theatre production of Ferrars's Always Say Die (see photo), in which a woman investigates her aunt's disappearance amid a slew of shady characters.

Shortly before his death, distinguished author-critic H. R. F. Keating, who reviewed Ferrars's Frog in the Throat favorably in the Times, kindly provided a blurb for the back cover. Sadly, Macdonald (coauthor, Scott Turow: A Critical Companion and Shaman or Sherlock? The Native American Detective; author, Robert Ludlum: A Critical Companion) died in September 2010 of leukemia—she worked on this book as she was undergoing medical treatment. Her dedication to this work was inspirational.

U.S. writers on Time covers.

John P. Marquand,
from The Rotarian
(Aug 1949)

The Web site of the American Writers Museum (a proposed new museum on American literature) highlights the Time magazine covers since 1923 that have featured U.S. writers. Mystery fans will appreciate the ones with Craig Rice (1946), Mr. Moto creator John P. Marquand (1949), noted mystery critic and Columbia University provost Jacques Barzun (1956), Scott Turow (1990), and Michael Crichton (1995). Missed is James Gould Cozzens (1957), author of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work The Just and the Unjust (1942).

Has a writer ever been selected as Time's Person of the Year? I can't recall.

Law professor: Law students can learn from detective stories.

When lawyers are not being villainized in popular culture, they are often portrayed as having many of the same admirable traits as a shrewd detective.
— Simon Stern, "Detecting Doctrines" 101

In "Detecting Doctrines: The Case Method and the Detective Story" (Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 23.2 [2011], 101–48), U-Toronto law professor Simon Stern suggests that the detective story

Illustration of Randolph
Mason by Dan Sayre
Groesheck, from Melville
Davisson Post's "The
Corrector of Destinies"
Pearson's Magazine
Feb 1907

can help teach legal reasoning and provides some examples of how courts have applied the detective story in constructing doctrines. He quotes from R. Austin Freeman's "Art of the Detective Story" (1924) and also deals with lawyers as detectives, including Anna Katharine Green's The Leavenworth Case (1878); Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886); Arthur Morrison's Martin Hewitt, Investigator (1894); the inevitable Randolph Mason (of Melville Davisson Post) and Perry Mason (of Erle Stanley Gardner); the Francis Pettigrew novels of Cyril Hare; and Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent (1987). Who knew that the legal magazine Green Bag criticized Sherlock Holmes's reasoning in 1902?  (Hat tips to the Legal Theory and Law & Humanities blogs)

Nat Bk Festival video: Grimes, Turow, et al.

Scott Turow

The Library of Congress has posted various presentations from the 2010 National Book Festival. These feature, among others:

• Ken Follett
• Martha Grimes
• Karin Slaughter
• Peter Straub
• Scott Turow

Vote for your favorite mystery author.

The Library of Congress is asking readers to vote for their favorite authors who have attended the National Book Festival in its 10-year history.  Mystery author possibilities include Nevada Barr, Louis Bayard, Laura Lippman, Walter Mosley, and Scott Turow. Diana Gabaldon currently leads in the voting.

This year's festival is scheduled for September 25.

Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary; Scott Turow.

Oregon native and Newbury Medal winner Beverly Cleary, who created Klickitat Street's beloved Beezus Quimby, Ramona Quimby, and Henry Huggins in books such as Henry Huggins (1950), Henry and Ribsy (1954), and Beezus and Ramona (1955), turns 92 today.

And legal eagle Scott Turow was born today in Chicago in 1949. In addition to his thrillers, he is the author of an insightful look at the first year of law school, One L, which also discusses one of his professors--Alan Dershowitz.