BBC's Great Lives: P. D. James.

I was late in finding this, but this BBC Radio 4 Great Lives program on P. D. James features author Val McDermid speaking eloquently about the work and sometimes tough life of the late mystery writer. As McDermid recalls, "She was quite mischievous . . . she notably said that she believed the day should start by saying four or five politically incorrect things before breakfast." McDermid also reads a chilling excerpt from A Shroud for a Nightingale.

Exhibition: "Mystery Writers Past and Present."

Frances Fyfield

There is a photographic exhibition from UK's National Portrait Gallery, "Mystery Writers Past and Present," on view at Darlington's Head of Steam Museum until December 14. The photos feature contemporary writers such as P. D. James taken by Nicola Kurtz as well as Victorian photos of authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens. The list of Kurtz's photographic subjects in the gallery's collection includes Clare Curzon, Stella Duffy, Frances Fyfield, the late H. R. F. Keating, Val McDermid, Andrew Taylor, and Minette Walters.

A similar 2002 exhibition included photos of Colin Dexter and Ian Rankin.

McDermid on Pinkerton.

Allan Pinkerton. NYPL.

Today on BBC Radio 4 Extra's program The First Private Eye, Val McDermid talks about Allan Pinkerton, the groundbreaking private detective who thwarted a plot against Abraham Lincoln (as Daniel Stashower makes clear in the Edgar-winning The Hour of Peril).

In Search of Scotland: Buchan, McDermid, et al.

Arthur Conan Doyle, n.d.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Div.

University of Otago's "In Search of Scotland" online exhibition includes John Buchan, Arthur Conan Doyle, Val McDermid, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Lucy Sussex on 19C female writers and detectives.

Among the most popular posts on this blog are those dealing with early female detectives and women mystery writers. Lucy Sussex's Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction: The Mothers of the Mystery Genre (2010; foreword by Val McDermid) is a solid discussion of women's major contributions to the emerging genre. Sussex has done much to shed new light on often neglected female writers in the genre (most notably Irish-born Mary Helena Fortune), and she published an article in Clues 26.1 (2007) on Edward Bulwer Lytton's contributions to the mystery field that garnered praise from the Hon. Henry Lytton Cobbold (Bulwer Lytton's great-grandson). Both Fortune's and Bulwer Lytton's roles are well reflected in the book.

Sussex traces the cross-currents among the gothic, the Newgate novel, newspaper crime accounts, and the sensation genre that were integral to the establishment of detective fiction. Writers covered include Catherine Crowe, Ellen Davitt, Anna Katharine Green, Ann Radcliffe, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Fanny Trollope. There is some impressive literary sleuthing on Metta Fuller Victor (author of The Dead Letter, 1866) that significantly expands on my article in the Fall 2003 Mystery Scene ("Metta Fuller Victor: A Sensational Life"). Intriguing parallels are drawn between the work of Ellen Wood (East Lynne, etc.) and Agatha Christie as well as the surprising but plausible assertion that Mary Elizabeth Braddon created the first clerical sleuth ("George Caulfield's Journey," 1879). Readers also will like the timeline in the back of the book that traces true-crime milestones alongside ones in fiction (such as the first Newgate Calendar in 1728, the 1833 birth of Pinkerton agent Kate Warne, and the 1859 publication of Spofford's "In a Cellar"). All in all, this is an excellent resource for those who would like to learn more about women's contributions to the emerging mystery genre in the nineteenth century.

Val McDermid on Radio New Zealand; ABC Book Show.

Val McDermid talks to Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand regarding her new book Trick of the Dark and the attractions of crime fiction for readers. She also was featured on Australia's radio program The Book Show during the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Val McDermid, £10, and a mystery bookshop.

The Guardian gives Val McDermid £10 to spend in a mystery bookstore. See Val talk about Agatha Christie; her love for the Penguin green-backed novels; and one of her favorite American mystery writers, Alaska resident John Straley.

Val McDermid, Lindsey Davis this week on BBC Radio 7.

In the latest in the series Foul Play, which is written and chaired by Simon Brett, authors Lindsey Davis and Val McDermid attempt to solve the mysterious death of a doctor. Go here for the schedule or to listen.

Woolf's A Room of One's Own at 80 and Val McDermid.

BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour commemorates the 80th anniversary of Virginia Woolf's seminal work A Room of One's Own with this Oct 22nd program, including commentary by Val McDermid and Jill Dawson (author of Fred & Edie, a fictional retelling of the Thompson-Bywaters murder case).