Score to Christie's Witness for the Prosecution (1982).

As John Bettencourt notes in Film Score Friday, Caldera has released John Cameron's score for Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution (dir. Alan Gibson, 1982). This TV production features Beau Bridges, Michael Gough, Wendy Hiller, Deborah Kerr, Donald Pleasence, Ralph Richardson, and Diana Rigg. For more information or to listen to some clips, go here. 

A 1980s interview with pulp figure Howard Browne.

Noah Beery Jr. (background) and James Garner (foreground) 
in "Sleight of Hand," The Rockford Files (1975)

I came across a post on radio station KPFA of a 1980s interview with sci-fi and mystery pulp author-editor-screenwriter Howard Browne (1908–99) conducted by author Richard A. Lupoff.  A collection of Browne's mysteries with PI Paul Pine is available from Haffner Press. Browne's screen credits include Banacek, Capone (film, 1975), The Fugitive, Kraft Suspense Theatre, Longstreet, Mannix, Mission: Impossible, and 77 Sunset Strip. His novel Thin Air (1954) was adapted three times: as an episode of Climax, as the episode "Sleight of Hand" for The Rockford Files, and as an episode of Simon & Simon.

Clues 43.2: Disability and Detective Fiction.

Volume 43, no. 2, of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published—a theme issue on Disability and Detective Fiction, guest edited by Susannah B. Mintz (Skidmore College) and Mark Osteen (Loyola Univ Maryland). See below for the abstracts. Contact McFarland for a copy of the issue or a subscription.

Update, 11 Jan 2026: Kindle version and Nook version available.

Update, 18 Jan 2026: Google Play version available.

Introduction: Disability and Detective Fiction
 / Susannah B. Mintz and Mark Osteen 

“The blindest of the blind”: Blind Men, Beggars, and Murderers in Catherine Crowe’s Crime Fiction / Emily Cline
Catherine Crowe portrays literal and figurative blindness in the proto-detective stories Men and Women (1843), Lilly Dawson (1847), and “The Blind Witness and His Dog” (1849).  Embodied and metaphorical blindness propose competing forms of knowledge, sympathetic and diagnostic, revealing the optocentric biases that limit the Victorian criminal court’s means of detection. 

Seeing Is (Dis)believing: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Classification of Disability in The Trail of the Serpent  / Roshnara Kissoon (Teachers College, Columbia University)
This essay examines the depiction of disability in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent (1860), which features a nonverbal detective protagonist. Braddon’s novel elucidates, and contributes to, a taxonomy of disability that intersects with its nuanced class system, ultimately revealing the limits of both, despite its innovative portrayal. 

Broken Bones: Isolation, Mobility, and Interdependence in Rear Window / Mark Osteen 
This essay demonstrates how the sleuthing of L.B. Jefferies, his girlfriend Lisa, and his nurse Stella metaphorically reassembles Mrs. Thorwald, Rear Window’s murder victim. Jefferies’s disability eventually enables him to recognize not only his but also neighbors’ interdependency and results in his metamorphosis into a more compassionate neighbor and lover. 

“Do you see?”: Disability and “Seeing” Evidence in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon / Darren Gray 
Red Dragon subverts crime fiction’s tropes of the monstrous criminal and extraordinary detective by exploring both disabled and nondisabled viewpoints. Through disfigured and speech-impaired criminal Francis Dolarhyde, investigator Will Graham, and the blind Reba McAllen, Thomas Harris exposes the subjectivity of perception and the impacts of ableism, marginalization, and prejudice. 

Disabilities and Stephen King’s Detectives / Michael J. Blouin (Milligan Univ)
Stephen King has repeatedly returned to characters with disabilities to explore what it means to be human, intersecting with King’s under-examined forays into detective fiction. Although King’s depictions of individuals living with disabilities remain problematic, his bestselling works offer fecund sites for ruminating upon the relationship between disabilities and detective stories. 

More on Harry O.

Over on The Rap Sheet, J. Kingston Pierce conducts an extensive interview with Steve Aldous and Gary Gillies, authors of McFarland's Harry O Viewing Companion, about the beloved PI series starring David Janssen and Anthony Zerbe (the latter in an Emmy–winning performance). Topics include Janssen's approach to the role, series locations, costars (such as Farrah Fawcett), the important contributions of screenwriter Howard Rodman, and much more. I acquired the book for McFarland.

Aldous and Gillies on Harry O.

Steve Aldous and Gary Gillies, authors of McFarland's Harry O Viewing Companion, clear up misconceptions about the beloved PI series and discuss the program's original San Diego location in a two-part episode of Ed Robertson's TV Confidential radio show. Part 1 includes a clip of the late David Janssen talking about the series and some clips from Harry O episodes. Part 2 covers the roles of Farrah Fawcett (as Harry's girlfriend Sue Ingham) and Les Lannom (as aspiring criminologist Lester Hodges) as well as the favorite episodes of Aldous, Gillies, and Robertson.

New: The Harry O Viewing Companion.

New from McFarland: The Harry O Viewing Companion by Steve Aldous and Gary Gillies, with comprehensive information on the 1972–76 TV series with David Janssen as Harry Orwell, a San Diego cop turned private detective. It includes goodies such as interviews with co-stars Anthony Zerbe (who won an Emmy for his performance in the series) and Les Lannom; fascinating details from the papers of series creator Howard Rodman; a look at guest stars such as Farrah Fawcett, Jodie Foster, and Kurt Russell; as well as behind-the scenes images lent by Zerbe and photos of shooting locations.

Clues 42.2: BIPOC Female Detectives in a Global Context.

Clues, vol. 42, no. 2 (2024)—a theme issue on BIPOC female detectives in a global context guest edited by Sam Naidu (Rhodes University, South Africa)—has been published. Contact McFarland to order the issue or a subscription. Abstracts follow below.

Update, 8 Mar 2025—Ebook versions now available:
Kindle, Nook, Google Play

Introduction: BIPOC Female Detectives in a Global Context / Sam Naidu

The guest editor discusses the rationale for and content of this Clues theme issue, including articles on the TV series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the work of Eleanor Taylor Bland, Oyinkan Braithwaite, K’im Ch’aehŭi, Maria L. M. Fres-Felix, Pauline Hopkins, Tiffany D. Jackson, Vaseem Khan, Angela Makholwa, Marcia Muller, BarbaraNeely, Nnedi Okorafor, and Kwei Quartey.

“Or my name ain’t Venus Johnson”:
The Birth of Pauline Hopkins’ Black Female Detective in Hagar’s Daughter
Andrea Tinnemeyer

Pauline Hopkins’ Hagar’s Daughter (serialized 1901–03) meditates on detective fiction’s potential to offer agency and self-created potential for a Black woman in Jim Crow times. The result is a liberating use of genre that not only celebrates the prowess of its detective, Venus Johnson, but also affirms the knowledge that flows from Black women and their communities.

Night Girl and the Nate-Rock:
Material Feminisms and Double Consciousness in BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam
Lisa Koyuki Smith (CUNY Graduate Center)

This study focuses on BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam (1992), exploring Neely’s material feminisms avant la lettre, their connection to W.E.B. Du Bois’s articulation of double consciousness, narratological understandings of the detective genre, and narratives of racial passing that express the discursive and material complexity of race relations in the United States. 

Listen to the Silence:
Reconsidering Race in Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone Hard-boiled Detective Novels
Alexander N. Howe (University of the District of Columbia)
This article examines the development of the Native identity of Marcia Muller’s female private eye, Sharon McCone. McCone initially is identified with one-eighth Shoshone heritage. In Listen to the Silence (2000), McCone learns of her adoption and the membership of her birth parents in the Shoshone Nation. The series’ second half explores McCone’s Native identity, and contemporary Native experience, with increasing nuance and detail. 

“You are a Symbol, Persis”: The Complexity of Postcolonial and Feminist Progress in Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House Series
Sophie-Constanze Bantle (University of Freiburg, Germany)
Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House series presents 1950s India as rife with opportunity and difficulty. Post-independence feminist and postcolonial emancipation is portrayed as a complicated and ongoing process, mirrored in discussions around Persis’ status as a symbol. Persis combats her society’s social problems, providing an example of agency in the face of oppression.

An appreciation of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn Theme."

From left: composer Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn star
Craig Stevens, and writer-director Blake Edwards

On Philadelphia's WRTI, journalist Shaun Brady writes an appreciation of Henry Mancini's theme for the 1958–61 TV detective show Peter Gunn—"its propulsive rhythm suggesting the steady thrum of tires on pavement, its skulking piano-guitar ostinato, and its Doppler-effect brass fanfares."

Some "Peter Gunn Theme" versions:

• Henry Mancini and His Orchestra, Ed Sullivan Show, 1969

• Emerson, Lake and Palmer, 1978

• Lahti Symphony Orchestra (conductor: Nick Davies), 2011

• Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, 2016

Judge Dee rules.

China Daily discusses a new series on China's Central Television, Judge Dee's Mystery, which includes 17 cases based on the works of Dutch diplomat Robert van Gulik. Van Gulik had first translated an 18th-century Chinese work featuring Judge Dee (the real Judge Dee dates to the 7th century AD) and went on to write further cases for Judge Dee to solve.  Zhou Yiwei plays Judge Dee, and Li Yunliang directs the series.

China Daily reports that Netflix is picking up the series (Netflix lists it as debuting on March 16).

K.K. Beck's work on TV.

I've been slow to discover Hallmark's Jane Mysteries series based on K. K. Beck's novels with Jane da Silva, a sleuth who tackles difficult cases (A Hopeless Case, Amateur Night, Electric City, Cold Smoked). One TV movie has been produced to date:

• "Inheritance Lost" (based on Beck's A Hopeless Case)

 

There is a 1994 TV movie, Shadow of Obsession, with Veronica Hamel that was an adaptation of Beck's stalker novel Unwanted Attentions (a novel greatly admired by Elizabeth Peters).

"Died in the Wool" (1978).

George Baker in "Died in the Wool" (1978)

In Died in the Wool (1978), Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn (George Baker) looks into the murder of an MP, whose body is found in a bale of wool.

Columbo exhibition.

Columbo exhibition artwork by
Jam Bookshop owner and illustrator
David Ziggy Green

Jam Bookshop in Hackney, London, plans the upcoming exhibition "Just One More Thing," which will be composed of artworks from the public that salute Richard Levinson and William Link's rumpled yet shrewd detective. The exhibition will run May 4–21, 2023. More here (including some sample drawings).

Clues CFP: BIPOC female detectives.

Seeking to illuminate an often marginalized space, this Clues theme issue will focus on female detectives who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color); span eras, genres, and geographical locations; and appear in texts, TV programs, films, and other media. Of particular interest are intersections among race, indigeneity, gender, age, class, or sexuality in these works, as well as projects that center BIPOC authorship and scholarship. 

Some Suggested Topics:  

• BIPOC female detective figures in African and Asian crime fiction, such as in works by Leye Adenle, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Angela Makholwa, and Jane De Suza. 
• BIPOC female detectives in hard-boiled and traditional mysteries that might include characters such as Carolina Garcia-Aguilera’s Lupe Solano, Eleanor Taylor Bland’s Marti MacAlister, Leslie Glass’s April Woo, Sujata Massey’s Rei Shimura and Perveen Mistry, Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, BarbaraNeely’s Blanche White, S. J. Rozan’s Lydia Chin, Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle and Odessa Jones, and Paula L. Woods’s Charlotte Justice. 
• BIPOC female detectives in film and television series such as Get Christie Love! (1974–75, TV movie 2018), Angie Tribeca (2016), and Black Earth Rising (2018). 
• BIPOC female detectives in comics/graphic novels such as Storm and Misty Knight of Marvel Comics, Martha Washington of Dark Horse Comics, and Vixen of DC Comics. 
• BIPOC female sidekicks such as Janet Evanovich’s Lula, Elementary’s Joan H. Watson, or BIPOC detecting teams such as those in Cheryl Head’s Charlie Mack series or Ausmat Zehanat Khan’s Inaya Rahman series. 
• BIPOC female detectives of male authors such as Kwei Quartey, Deon Meyer, and Alexander McCall Smith. 
• Analyses of historical BIPOC female detectives in crime fiction such as in Fergus Hume’s Hagar of the Pawnshop (1898) and Pauline E. Hopkins’s Hagar’s Daughter (1901). 
• Analyses that queer the BIPOC female detective, or examine the intersections between gender and sexuality in these works. 
• Relationships between BIPOC female detectives and criminals/criminality. 

Submissions should include a proposal of approximately 250 words and a brief biosketch. Proposals due: May 30, 2023. Submit proposals to: Prof. Sam Naidu, email: s.naidu <at> ru.ac.za. Full manuscripts of approximately 6,000 words based on an accepted proposal will be due by September 30, 2023.

A Bunburyist milestone.

1,000,000

A milestone sneaked up on me: The Bunburyist has passed its 1 millionth view. When I began this blog in November 2005, I really had no idea if anyone would be interested in my posts (visitors probably have noticed that I am particularly fond of archival mystery goodies and exhibitions on mysteries, as I think these can tend to be overlooked and are valuable resources). In recent years, I've had to cut back on blogging because of work and writing commitments and the addition of my blog on US women in World War I—even wondering at times if I should end this blog. So, if you've ever stopped by, thanks. 

Here are the top-10 posts with the most views:

Eugène François Vidocq,
from Memoires de Vidocq,
Chef de la Police de Sureté
Jusqu'en 1827. Paris, 1828–29.

10. The First 100 Years of Detective Fiction.  "...[T"he Lilly Library of Indiana University's online version of its 1973 exhibition 'The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction, 1841–1941' ... provides a useful history of the genre through the works selected"

9. Remembering Adam West: The Detectives. Although Adam West probably is best known as the titular character in the TV series Batman, he previously played Detective Sergeant Steve Nelson in the TV series The Detectives.

8. Shoot to Kill (film noir, 1947). A murder involves a gangster, a DA, a DA's wife/secretary, and a reporter.

7. "Iniquity is catching": Frank R. Stockton's The Stories of the Three Burglars (1889). Burglars bargain with a wronged homeowner in this work by the author of "The Lady, or the Tiger?"

6. "Security Risk" (GE True, 1963). A tale of espionage narrated by Jack Webb, directed by William Conrad, and starring Charles Aickman.

5. "Iconic detectives" exhibition at Ohio State. Library exhibition that featured "detectives from dime novels, young adult books, comic books, films, and manga."

4.  Hidden Fear (film, 1957). US cop John Payne works in Denmark to clear his sister of a murder charge.

3. "The Grave Grass Quivers," by MacKinlay Kantor. The poignant 1931 story by a Pulitzer Prize winner of a doctor who seeks to learn the fate of his long-missing father and brother. 

2. "Committed" (with Alan Ladd, 1954). In this episode of GE Theater, a writer is framed for murder and confined to an asylum.

1. The dozen best detective short stories ever written. Selected by author-critics such as Anthony Boucher, John Dickson Carr, August Derleth, Howard Haycraft, Ellery Queen, James Sandoe, and Vincent Starrett.

New: The Crime World of Michael Connelly.

New from McFarland is David Geherin's The Crime World of Michael Connelly, which provides insight into characters such as Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller (aka the Lincoln Lawyer), media adaptations of Connelly's work, Connelly's technique, and Connelly's portrayals of LA and its police. I enjoyed looking at the final proofs of this book.

Clues 40.2: Columbo, Chandler, Christie, Dexter, Ms. Fisher, Teaching Forum, and more.

Clues 40.2 (2022) has been published, featuring its first Teaching Forum—this one on teaching crime fiction after Black Lives Matter, engaging with issues such as race, gender, and class. As usual, we are delighted to have contributors from around the world. See below for abstracts. Contact McFarland for subscriptions or a print copy of the journal. 

Update, 12-30-22. The ebook versions of the issue are now available: Kindle, Nook, Google Play

Around the World Backwards and Forwards
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY/CUNY Graduate School)

Caroline Reitz, the executive editor of Clues, provides an overview of the issue, including articles on Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Columbo, Colin Dexter, contemporary European crime narratives, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, forensic psychiatrists in crime fiction, Deon Meyer, Ms. Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, and a forum on teaching crime fiction after Black Lives Matter.

Rethinking Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944/1946)
STEWART KING (Monash University, Australia)

This review article revisits Raymond Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder” and examines its ongoing relevance for crime fiction studies. It asks to what extent does Chandler’s iconic essay help us to understand and explain the crime genre, both historically and today.

Intersecting Crime: South African State Capture and the Hero-Criminal Binary in Deon Meyer’s The Last Hunt (2019) / SAM NAIDU (Rhodes University, South Africa)

Deon Meyer’s The Last Hunt can be categorized as African noir in its themes of political disillusionment, corruption, and crimes of the state against its citizens, shedding light on contemporary African-European relations. The article examines the novel’s intersections of time, space, national, and transnational with criminal and detective characters, and the blurriness of the hero-criminal binary.

Contemporary European Crime Narratives: “Euro-Glocal”?
THEO D’HAEN (University of Leiden, The Netherlands/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

The article makes a case for the emergence of a particularly European brand of crime fiction, film, and television series that fosters a closer European union.

“Mystery” Beyond Reason:
Mr. Quin, a Revealer of the Powers of Fiction According to Agatha Christie?
MARC VERVEL (Université de Paris, France)

The short story collection The Mysterious Mr. Quin has a special place in Agatha Christie’s work. In these stories where rational investigation opens up to the supernatural, Christie theorizes what is at stake in the desire to read and proposes an expanded conception of the detective story.

The Skeptical Poetics of Colin Dexter’s Morse Novels
MICHAL SÝKORA (Palacký University, Czech Republic)

This article argues that Detective Chief Inspector Morse is a different figure in Colin Dexter’s novels than the popular television series. The author locates Dexter’s novels in British postwar crime fiction, with attention to representations of the social reality of Oxford and gender issues, and reads The Wench Is Dead to argue Morse’s hermeneutic approach to investigation reveals an ironic skepticism about truth.

Colin Dexter’s Classicism / MATTHEW WRIGHT (University of Exeter, UK)

Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books, unlike any other detective novels, are saturated with references to Greek and Latin language and literature. This article explores the significance of Classics and classical scholarship in Dexter’s world and argues that the novels present a consistent (and consistently troubling) view of education and culture. 

Turkey's first detective TV series.

 Read more about Alef, Turkey's first detective TV series.

Remembering Brian Dennehy: Perfect Witness (1989).

Amid the large body of work of veteran actor Brian Dennehy, who died on April 15, is the TV movie Perfect Witness (1989),  in which he appears as a district attorney wishing to prosecute a mob killing, but the witness (Aidan Quinn) faces threats to his family.

"Somebody Loves You" (1960).

Screenwriter Liam O'Brien created the scenario for the 1960 TV series Johnny Midnight. It starred his brother, Edmond O'Brien, as an actor turned PI investigating crimes in the New York theatrical world, often drawing on his talent for disguise and usually involving some sort of fight sequence. In the episode "Somebody Loves You," Johnny looks into the suicide attempt of a celebrated Swedish actress. J. Pat O'Malley costars.

"The Last of the Sommervilles" (1961).

In this episode of Thriller directed by Ida Lupino and cowritten by Lupino and her cousin Richard Lupino, a scheming heir plots to eliminate the competition for an inheritance. Phyllis Thaxter and Martita Hunt costar.