Margery Allingham, graphic novel character.

Editions Dargaud has published Cauchemars ex machina (Nightmares Ex Machina) by Thierry Smolderen (text) and Jorge Gonzalez (art), which features mystery author Margery Allingham as a character working for British intelligence during World War II. Visit this link to see a sample, in which Allingham is called "une grande dame de la detection anglaise" (a great lady of English detection).

The Hesse crown jewels case.

Among the projects on which the National Archives is requesting volunteer transcribing assistance are court-martial case files of Army Colonel Jack W. Durant and his wife, Captain Kathleen Nash Durant, who were convicted (along with co-conspirator David Watson) of stealing the House of Hesse crown jewels after World War II (Countess Margaret of Hesse-Kassel was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and the Duke of Edinburgh's sister Sophie married into the family). For discussions of the case, see Geoffrey E. Duin's article on HistoryNet and Fred L. Borch III's article in The Army Lawyer.

For details on the Citizen Archivist projects at the National Archives, go here.

The Chase (1946).

Based on The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich, The Chase features Robert Cummings as a troubled World War II veteran who becomes chauffeur to gangster Steve Cochran and entangled with Cochran's wife (Michele Morgan). Peter Lorre costars.

Yellow Canary (1943).

Richard Greene and Anna Neagle
in Yellow Canary (1943)

In Yellow Canary, a well-to-do Nazi sympathizer (Anna Neagle) traveling to Canada becomes a focus of both British and Nazi agents, with the fate of a British convoy in the balance. The film is based on a story by Pamela Bower (daughter of the film's director, Herbert Wilcox, and stepdaughter of Neagle) and a screenplay cowritten by actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson. Costars include Richard Greene, Margaret Rutherford, and Valentine Dyall.

The Seventh Survivor (1942).

In The Seventh Survivor, World War II secret agents square off after a ship is torpedoed.

Everything Is Thunder (1936).

Based on the novel by former British Army officer Jocelyn Lee Hardy, Everything Is Thunder features a prostitute (Constance Bennett) who attempts to help a prisoner of war (Douglas Montgomery) escape from Nazi Germany.

Unpublished Story (1942).

In Unpublished Story, reporters Richard Greene and Valerie Hobson uncover a Nazi plot amid the London blitz.

Back-Room Boy (1942).

In Back-Room Boy, a BBC employee sent to a remote Scottish island faces an influx of models and Nazi spies.

The Hand (1960).

In The Hand, an inspector learns that the murder of a one-handed man has roots in a POW camp in Burma.

Bon Voyage (dir. Hitchcock, 1944).

In Bon Voyage, a short film directed by Alfred Hitchcock for the British Ministry of Information, a French intelligence officer questions an RAF sergeant about his escape from France, as the involvement of a German agent is suspected. The film is in French (with English subtitles), with John Blythe as the sergeant and members of the Molière Players in the other roles.

I See a Dark Stranger (aka The Adventuress, 1946).

Irishwoman Deborah Kerr and British soldier Trevor Howard become embroiled in World War II espionage involving a little black book and D-Day in this screenwriting effort by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat (The Lady Vanishes, Night Train to Munich, The Green Man, etc.); Launder also directs.

Two Thousand Women (1944).

Frank Launder in 1947.

In Two Thousand Women, Flora Robson and Phyllis Calvert are two of the British women interned in World War II France who try to aid downed RAF airmen. The screenwriter-director is Frank Launder (The Lady Vanishes, Night Train to Munich).

Rex Stout/Bertrand Russell on civil liberties.

Top: Bertrand Russell, ca. 1936. NYPL.
Bottom: Mitch Miller, Edward Whitehead, and
Rex Stout compare beards in Feb. 1957.
Ogdensburg [NY] Journal

Mystery author Rex Stout hosted the NBC radio program Speaking of Liberty during World War II. In a July 1941 episode on civil liberties (program no. 14) with philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell, Russell states, "Intolerance is dangerously inconsistent with the goal of liberty." Stout replies, "Nothing is more fundamentally antidemocratic or actually more uncivilized."

The crossroads of German detective fiction.

The Virginia Gazette talked to Bruce Campbell, associate professor of German studies at the College of William & Mary, about his collection (edited with Alison Guenther-Pal and Vibeke Ruetzou Petersen) Detectives, Dystopia and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre Fiction. Covered in the book are intersections among crime fiction, science fiction, politics, the Nazis, and the Holocaust.

Related: Campbell discusses German detective fiction on the radio program With Good Reason.

In addition, watch Campbell's Oct. 2016 W&M Tack Faculty Lecture on "The Detective Is (Not) a Nazi: German Pulp Fiction." In his lecture, Campbell discusses detective fiction, culture, and memory in Germany, and recommends some authors in English translation (such as Friedrich Duerenmatt, Friedrich Glauser, and Doris Gercke). He also points out that a German detective novel (Adolf Muellner's Der Kaliber) was published in 1828, well before Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and that the longest-running TV series in the world is the German Scene of the Crime (aka Tatort).

A British mystery author's work with Holocaust survivors.

Charity Blackstock.
Photo by Mark Gerson

The Neglected Books blog highlights The Children (1966) by mystery writer Charity Blackstock (pseudonym of Ursula Torday, 1912–97; 1959 Edgar nominee for The Woman in the Woods). The Children are those traumatized by the Holocaust who came for a holiday in England, sponsored by a group headed by Torday (a Gentile). The New York Times called it a "moving and remarkable memoir."

"Deception" (with Linda Darnell and Trevor Howard, 1956).

Linda Darnell, ca. 1940

Based on the Alec Waugh Esquire story "A Small Back Room in St. Marylebone," this episode of the 20th Century-Fox Hour features a British plot to misdirect the Nazis through the capture of an Allied agent and the agent divulging information under torture. It is agent Linda Darnell's job to choose the person for the mission. Of course, the agent selected (Trevor Howard) cannot be informed about the real mission and the falsity of his information, so he ultimately believes that he is a traitor. John Williams and Alan Napier costar.

A later incarnation of the Waugh story is Circle of Deception (1960) with Bradford Dillman and Suzy Parker (later real-life spouses).

The Armed Services editions and mysteries.

Cover of Armed Services edition
of Rex Stout's Not Quite Dead
Enough (1945)

I just finished Molly Guptill Manning's When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, which provides a lively and often poignant discussion of the importance to service members of the Armed Services editions in World War II. They were produced to be sturdy, lightweight, and sized for a pocket, and the Council on Books in Wartime, in charge of the effort, tried to supply a book "to fit the tastes of every man" (79). (One of the council's members was Farrar & Rinehart's Stanley Rinehart, son of Mary Roberts Rinehart). The council printed more than 123 million copies of Armed Services editions.

To mention a few mystery-related elements in the book:

• One of the authors listed as banned in Germany:
  G. K. Chesterton 

• "The most popular genre was contemporary fiction . . . followed by historical novels, mysteries, books of humor, and westerns" (79–80).

•  Among the earliest Armed Services editions: Earl Derr Biggers, Seven Keys to Baldpate; W. R. Burnett, Little Caesar; Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn; and Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

• Some of the last Armed Services editions published in 1947: John Dickson Carr, The Sleeping Sphinx; Manning Coles, With Intent to Deceive; Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Fan-Dancer's Horse; Hilda Lawrence, Death of a Doll; Richard and Frances Lockridge, Think of Death; Ngaio Marsh, Final Curtain; Craig Rice, ed., Los Angeles Murders; and Kelley Roos, Ghost of a Chance.

Related:

• BookTV footage of Manning talking about the book in 2015

• Books in Action: The Armed Services Editions (ed. John Y. Cole, 1984)

• Editions for the Armed Services Inc.: A History (1948)

Rod Serling at war.

I want you to know what shrapnel and "88s" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean.

—The dedication of an unpublished short story by Rod Serling to his children, quoted in Anne Serling's As I Knew Him

Rod Serling with his 1960 Emmy
for outstanding writing
(for The Twilight Zone)

Rod Serling served as a paratrooper in World War II and was profoundly affected by his experiences. In Vincent Casaregola's thoughtful discussion "War in The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Haunted Visions of World War II" in Horrors of War, he notes that one-sixth of Twilight Zone episodes are about war (these include "The Purple Testament" with William Reynolds and "The Quality of Mercy" with Dean Stockwell; other examples from Serling's oeuvre are "The Time Element" aired on Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, "The Strike" for Studio One, and The Rack). In the episode below from Writing for Television: Conversations with Rod Serling, Serling states, "I was traumatized into writing by war events."

Pacific Blackout (1941).

Ad for Pacific Blackout (1941)

Framed by a nightclub singer for the murder of a coworker, Robert Preston also must thwart attempted sabotage by enemy agents in Pacific Blackout. One of the writers is Curt Siodmak (brother of Spiral Staircase director Robert Siodmak).

Secret Mission (1942).

Michael Wilding
in Secret Mission

In Secret Mission, British and French agents seek information on German forces in France as they prepare for an Allied invasion. Hugh Williams, James Mason, Michael Wilding, and Herbert Lom star. The story is by Shaun Young, better known as director Terence Young (Dr No, Triple Cross, Wait Until Dark, The Valachi Papers).