Newberry Library course, the Golden Age of Mystery.

Elzbieta Foeller-Pituch (Northwestern University) will be teaching the Newberry Library online course "The Golden Age of Mystery Fiction: Soft-Boiled and Hard-Boiled," which will run from Oct 14–Nov 11, 2026 and will "explore the role of popular culture in both exposing and containing societal anxieties and aspirations." Books expected to be covered are Vera Caspary, Laura; Agatha Christie, The Labors of Hercules and The 13 Problems; Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Boscombe Valley Mystery, "The Red Headed League," and "Silver Blaze"; and Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon.  

New Clues CFP: Mid-twentieth-century American women crime writers.

There is a new call for papers for a Clues: A Journal of Detection theme issue on the work of mid–twentieth-century American female crime writers. The guest editors are Erin A. Smith (University of Texas at Dallas) and Clare Rolens (Palomar College). Proposals are due 15 January 2027, with full essays of 5,000 to 6,000 words due 1 August 2027. 

Film Music Friday: More music from film noir.

Joseph Cotten, left, with Jack Moss in Eric Ambler's
Journey into Fear (1943)

A recent episode of Kansas Public Radio's Film Music Friday focused on music from film noir, including selections from Double Indemnity (composer Miklós Rózsa, 1944); Journey into Fear (composer Roy Webb, 1943); Laura (composer David Raksin, 1944); Please Murder Me (composer Albert Glasser, 1956); Sorry, Wrong Number (composer Franz Waxman, 1948); and more.

"Women & crime fiction" resource, UF Tampa Libraries

Margaret Lewis's biography of Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters

To accompany the U-Florida course Lit 4386, the Special Collections of the UF–Tampa Libraries has assembled a "Women & Crime Fiction" online exhibition featuring mystery highlights of its collection that focus on female authors, female detectives, femme fatales, and female victims. Some of the works featured are by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Vera Caspary, Lillian de la Torre, Anna Katharine Green, Margaret Millar, Ellis Peters, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Unusual items include The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, which offers Captain Kirk as detective, and an April 1960 letter from Columbia University student Leigh Marlowe to mystery author Baynard Kendrick related to her study of villains.

Reading group on Caspary, Highsmith, Hughes, Millar.

Edgar nominee Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY) will be facilitating a Zoom reading group from late September to December for the Center for Fiction on "Women Crime Fiction Writers of the 1940s and '50s."  Books covered will be Laura by Vera Caspary, Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, and Beast in View by Margaret Millar.

Laura's Waldo Lydecker.

In the North American Review, editor Grant Tracey examines the narcissism of Waldo Lydecker, a major character in Vera Caspary's Laura (and Caspary's take on Wilkie Collins's Count Fosco).

Out of the Blue (1947).

In this comedic film based on a story by Vera Caspary (with Caspary also a screenwriter on the film), the mild-mannered and married George Brent becomes the victim of a blackmail plot when he becomes entangled with another woman (Ann Dvorak), whom he believes has died in his apartment, with his wife (Carole Landis) due back at any moment.

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Laura (1962).

This German version of Vera Caspary's novel features Anton Walbrook as Waldo Lydecker, Hildegard Knef as Laura Hunt, and John Van Dreelen as Shelby Carpenter.

Bedelia (writ. Vera Caspary, 1946).

In Bedelia, a new bride (Margaret Lockwood) is suspected of bumping off her previous husbands for their insurance money, and the question is whether current husband Ian Hunter is at risk. Vera Caspary wrote the novel and collaborated on the screenplay. Jill Esmond (the first wife of Laurence Olivier) costars.

Dorothy B. Hughes's classic mystery library.

Claude Rains and Edward Norris in They Won't Forget (1937),
adaptation of Ward Greene's Death in the Deep South

In the 13 Nov 1977 Los Angeles Times, author-critic Dorothy B. Hughes made 23 selections for a classic mystery library. Hughes defined a classic as "a book to which you return over and again ... primarily because for you it satisfies a hunger for the felicity of beauty and craft..."(N3). For Hughes, "style is the most important element in any mystery, let alone a classic" (N3).

Hughes did not include any works by Arthur Conan Doyle and Erle Stanley Gardner (although Hughes would publish a biography of Gardner), explaining that in the case of these and some other authors (such as Ellery Queen), their body of work constitutes the classic rather than a single book. Hughes's choices for her classic mystery library are the following:

• Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios. "a hunt-and-search story with a background of the Near East leading to Paris"
  
• Edgar Box [Gore Vidal], Death in the Fifth Position. " . . . the world of the ballet, presented with perception and verisimilitude"
  
• Vera Caspary, Laura. "an enviable creator of plots which twist and turn and startle."
  
• Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely. "his making of poetry out of the tawdry was indeed something unforgettable"
  
• Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None. "two classic books"
  
• Len Deighton, The Ipcress File. "Deighton . . . devised a new style."
• Helen Eustis, The Horizontal Man. "a true academic background against which the tragicomedy is played."
  
• William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust. "a mystery sensation"
  
• Michael Gilbert, Close Quarters. "he has built a cathedral and its close, and has peopled it with verisimilitude."
  
• Graham Greene, Brighton Rock. "two sad insignificant persons revealed in their small moment of significance."
• Ward Greene, Death in the Deep South. "a classic of the regional and one of the first dealing with ethnic problems"
  
• Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon. "a classic romantic-adventure"
  
• H. F. [Gerald] Heard, A Taste for Honey. "Another of the instant classics"
  
• Francis Iles [Anthony Berkeley Cox], Before the Fact."a book whose plot must remain secret"
  
• Charlotte Jay [Geraldine Halls], Beat Not the Bones. "the primitive culture of Africa in collision with the 20th century"
  
• John le Carre [David Cornwell], The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. "tragic power"
  
• Meyer Levin, Compulsion. "a classic of major proportion"
  
• Marie Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger. " . . . a true crime story, in fiction form"
  
• Ngaio Marsh, Death of a Fool. "breath-taking"
  
• E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Great Impersonation. "a landmark"
  
• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors. "background became not just background, but important"
  
• Josephine Tey [Elizabeth MacKintosh], The Daughter of Time. "Simply written but brilliant in premise and performance."

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  Ad for They Won't Forget (from the film pressbook)

  
   

BFI's lists on "perfect crime" and noir films.

From an ad for The Killing (1956)

One of the latest lists on the British Film Institute blog is on "10 Great Films on Committing the Perfect Crime." These include The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Les Diaboliques (1954), Lift to the Scaffold (1958), The Killing (1956), and Thief (1981).

Another is a list of "10 Great American Film Noirs." Among expected entries (The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Laura) are The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and The Reckless Moment (based on Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's The Blank Wall, 1949).

For GivingTuesday: Consider mystery collections.

Phoebe Atwood
Taylor. From
Barnard College's
Mortarboard, 1930

Today's Giving Tuesday focuses attention on charitable contributions, as people consider the organizations or causes to support or to make a contribution in someone's name during the holiday season.

Libraries and archives need support to acquire, preserve, catalog, and digitize their collections as well as to present exhibitions or other programs involving their holdings. Consider contributing to your alma mater's library or one of the following collections with significant mystery elements:

• Ray and Pat Browne Popular Culture Library, Bowling Green State University

• Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico (home of the papers of Tony Hillerman)

• Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University (home of manuscripts of many authors such as Harry Kemelman, Jane Langton, Elizabeth Linington, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Hillary Waugh, and Donald Westlake)

• Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington (home of the papers of author-critic Anthony Boucher and Mystery Writers of America)

• Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (home of Erle Stanley Gardner's "plot wheel")

• Rose Library, Emory University (home of one of the largest collections of Victorian yellowbacks)

• Special Collections, University of California Irvine (home of the papers of Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald, and Margaret Millar)

• Special Collections, University of South Carolina (home of the papers of James Ellroy, George V. Higgins, and John Jakes. An ongoing and major project of the USC libraries is the preservation and digitization of 2000 Fox Movietone newsreels.)

• Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research (home of the papers of Vera Caspary, Kirk Douglas, and Dalton Trumbo. The center has recently established a portal at the Internet Archive that includes a home movie of theater legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.)

The Library of Congress offers several options for supporting its work (don't forget that it houses the papers of luminaries such as James M. Cain), including the National Book Festival.

"Laura" (with George Sanders and Robert Stack, 1955).

Dana Wynter in "Laura" (1955)

One of four screen adaptations of Vera Caspary's Laura is a 1955 TV version for the 20th Century-Fox Hour (also known as "A Portrait of Murder.") It features George Sanders as columnist Waldo Lydecker, Dana Wynter as advertising executive Laura Howe (rather than Hunt), and Robert Stack as detective Mark McPherson.

The Ninth Guest (1934).

Before Christie's And Then There Were None, penthouse partygoers in The Ninth Guest are informed by radio broadcast that they will be murdered one by one. The film is based on a play by Owen Davis and the novel The Invisible Host by Bruce Manning and Gwen Bristow. According to the 15 Feb. 1934 New York Sun, "Manning was on the [New Orleans Times] Picayune and Miss Bristow was on the Item. They both were assigned to cover a hanging in St. Mary's parish. There they were married—in the courthouse basement by a blind justice of the peace." (The Sun has swapped the papers—Bristow wrote for the Picayune and Manning for the Item.) Manning also was a screenwriter and director who worked on some film projects with Vera Caspary and Deanna Durbin, and Bristow is known for her Plantation trilogy.

The return of Caspary's The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966).

Somehow I missed the new entry in the Feminist Press series Femmes Fatales: Vera Caspary's The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966), which features a man who may have ulterior motives when it comes to his much younger wife. This novel, called a trompe l'oeil by Kirkus in its original release, follows FP's reissues of Caspary's Laura and Bedelia.

Capote's adaptation of Caspary's Laura, 1968.

The Paley Center for Media remembers the TV adaptation of Vera Caspary's Laura, which debuted today in 1968. Scripted by Truman Capote, it starred Capote friend Lee Radziwill (as Laura Hunt), Arlene Francis (as Ann Treadwell), Farley Granger (as Shelby Carpenter), Robert Stack (as Mark McPherson), and George Sanders (as Waldo Lydecker). Reviews were not that kind (see this example from the Milwaukee Journal).

Caspary's Three Husbands (1951).

In Three Husbands, a troublemaker's letters to three men claim that he has had affairs with their wives. If the plot sounds familiar, it is—A Letter to Three Wives (1949) with a gender flip and the same screenwriter: Vera Caspary, the author of Laura. With additional screenwriting assistance by songwriter Edward Eliscu, the film was produced by I. G. Goldsmith, Caspary's husband, and directed by Irving Reis (director of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer; some of the Falcon films with George Sanders; Enchantment). Its stars include Eve Arden, Howard da Silva, Ruth Warrick, and Vanessa Brown.
(Hat tip to Caspary scholar A. B. Emrys for bringing this film to my attention)

Lady of burlesque (and mystery).

Feminist Press notes that a number of independent bookstores are participating in giveaways this month of some of its mystery titles: Gypsy Rose Lee's recently reissued Mother Finds a Body (with a foreword by her son, Erik Lee Preminger) and its predecessor, The G-String Murders; Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place; and Vera Caspary's Laura.

Here is Barbara Stanwyck jitterbugging and performing Russian splits in Lady of Burlesque (film adaptation of The G-String Murders).

Modest mystery sales in Sept 15 Bloomsbury auction.

At the Sept 15 Bloomsbury auction the mystery-related offerings received relatively modest sums:

Vera Caspary, by Jane Rady
From The Secrets of Grown-ups

• Vera Caspary, Laura (1st ed., 1944), £70 (approx US$108)

• Agatha Christie, The Big Four (1st ed., 1927) with proof of Third Girl (1966), £60 (approx US$93)

• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1st ed., 1902), £460; His Last Bow (1st ed., 1917), £90 (approx US$139)

• Ian Fleming, Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1st ed., 1966), £100 (approx US$155)

• Graham Greene, signed Stamboul Train (2nd issue, 1932) and two other works, £50 (approx US$77)

• Lot of mysteries including Michael Dibdin, Cabal (1992); signed Ruth Rendell, The Keys to the Street (1996); signed P. D. James, Devices and Desires (1989), £280 (approx US$433)
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

New book on Collins and Caspary.

My colleague A. B. Emrys (University of Nebraska–Kearney) has a new book out with McFarland, Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary, and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel, which further traces the linkages between Wilkie Collins and Vera Caspary that were first explored in the Clues 23.3 (2005) article "Laura, Vera, and Wilkie" (for example, Laura's Waldo Lydecker was modeled on Count Fosco of Collins's The Woman in White). Emrys also edited the Caspary short story collection The Murder in the Stork Club and Other Mysteries and wrote afterwords to the Feminist Press reprints of Caspary's Laura and Bedelia.