Q. Patrick and radio station WNYC.

Andy Lanset, director of archives at New York Public Radio, discusses how radio station WNYC's signoff played a role in "Death and Canasta" (1950) by mystery author Q. Patrick (aka Hugh Callingham Wheeler).

New audiobk of Elizabeth Linington's first Mendoza novel.

LibriVox has released a new free audiobook of Dell Shannon's Edgar-nominated Case Pending (1960), the first in her Lt. Mendoza series. Shannon was one pseudonym of Elizabeth Linington (1921–88), who was an early female writer of police procedurals; her other pseudonyms included Anne Blaisdell and Lesley Egan. Anthony Boucher wrote in the 24 Jan 1960 New York Times that in Case Pending, "Miss Shannon tells of murder gone mad in the near-slums of Los Angeles, deftly (if almost over-precisely) tying a number of other plots in with her murders" (BR43).

Film score to Ed McBain's Cop Hater.

As Scott Bettencourt notes in Film Score Friday, Kronos Records has scheduled for release in July the soundtrack to Cop Hater (1958), the film based on the first 87th Precinct novel by Ed McBain (1956) featuring Robert Loggia, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, and Vincent Gardenia. The composer is Albert Glasser. Order the CD or listen to a few samples here.

Spotlighting the work of female Irish mystery writers.

In the student newspaper Trinity [College] News, Elaine McHale spotlights the work of some female Irish mystery writers: Andrea Carter, Jane Casey, Patricia Gibney, Martina Murphy, Liz Nugent, Louise Phillips, and Jo Spain.

LeRoy Lad Panek, 1943–2021.

Panek's last book

LeRoy Lad Panek, a longtime professor at McDaniel College (MD) and a distinguished mystery scholar, died November 5 of pancreatic cancer. His obituary was published in the Baltimore Sun. 

His last book is the newly published Nineteenth Century Detective Fiction: An Analytical History. His other works include the following:

  • Before Sherlock Holmes: How Magazines and Newspapers Invented the Detective Story

  • After Sherlock Holmes: The Evolution of British and American Detective Stories 1891–1914

  • The American Police Novel: A History (Edgar nominee)

  • Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology (ed. with Mary Bendel-Simso)

• The Essential Elements of the Detective Story, 1820–1891 (coauthored with Bendel-Simso)

• Introduction to the Detective Story (Edgar winner)

• The Origins of the American Detective Story

• Reading Early Hammett: A Critical Study of the Fiction Prior to The Maltese Falcon

• Watteau's Shepherds: The Detective Novel in Britain 1914–1940 (Edgar nominee)

Panek's Westminster Detective Library (a project with Bendel-Simso) is an invaluable online repository of short detective works published in the United States prior to 1891.

CFP, Historical Crime Fiction (theme issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection).

Clues has issued a new Call for Proposals for a theme issue on "Historical Crime Fiction" that will be guest edited by Rosemary Erickson Johnsen (Governors State University; author of Contemporary Feminist Historical Crime Fiction). The deadline for proposals is November 1, 2020.

As usual, Clues considers manuscripts on all aspects of mystery, detective, and crime fiction on an ongoing basis, so authors who have a manuscript on a topic that falls outside the Call for Proposals are welcome to submit to Clues Executive Editor Caroline Reitz at any time.

Clues 37.2: Interwar mysteries.

The volume 37, no. 2 (2019) issue of Clues has been published, which is a theme issue on interwar mysteries guest edited by Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester, UK). See below for the abstracts. To order the issue, contact McFarland.

Ebook versions available: GooglePlay, Kindle, and Nook.

Introduction / VICTORIA STEWART. The guest editor of Clues 37.2 on interwar mysteries discusses its contents, including articles on Agatha Christie, Mary Fitt. Ngaio Marsh, Clifford Orr, Raymond Postgate, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Josephine Tey.

Detecting Histories, Detecting Genealogies: The Origins of Golden Age Detective Fiction / STACY GILLIS (University of Newcastle, UK). This article traces interwar attempts to define detective fiction, with an emphasis on how critics such as Dorothy L. Sayers, H. Douglas Thomson, and T. S. Eliot traced its origins in classical, biblical, and more recent texts. It argues that this demonstrates an anxiety relating to conceptions of literary taste on the part of these commentators.

“The Ghost of Dr. Freud Haunts Everything Today”:
Criminal Minds in the Golden-Age Psychological Thriller / STEFANO SERAFINI (Royal Holloway, University of London). This essay provides new insights into the development of interwar crime fiction by investigating how, and to what extent, two such apparently irreconcilable subgenres as the classic detective story and the psychological thriller interact and intertwine in the work of often-neglected Golden Age writers.

Killing Innocence: Obstructions of Justice in Late-Interwar British Crime Fiction / J. C. BERNTHAL (University of Cambridge). This article analyzes Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and Raymond Postgate’s Verdict of Twelve, both written toward the end of the interwar period and published at the outset of World War II. Christie and Postgate interrogate ethics in the British criminal justice system, using the figure of the child-victim to complicate interwar constructions of innocence.

Capital Punishment and Women in the British Police Procedural: Josephine Tey’s A Shilling for Candles and To Love and Be Wise / EVIE JEFFREY (University of Newcastle, UK). This article considers Josephine Tey’s engagement with contemporary capital punishment debates through considering the phenomenon of the “wrongful” arrest. It argues that women are central to the exploration of these debates, particularly when reading the novels as part of the subgenre of police procedurals within the Golden Age of detective fiction.

New Clues CFP: "Crime's Hybrid Forms."

"Genre Bending: Crime's Hybrid Forms" is a new call for papers for a theme issue of Clues that will be guest edited by Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna). Submission deadline: October 1, 2019.

"Detective Waiting" (1971).

Richard Beckinsale in "Detective Waiting"

In this 14 September 1971 episode of Armchair Theatre, unpopular young detective Lewis (Richard Beckinsale, father of Kate) has a lot to prove to his skeptical colleagues when he is assigned the task of getting the goods on a slippery criminal. The screenwriter is Ian Kennedy Martin (The Saint, The Sweeney).

Music from Shetland available.

For those who enjoy Ann Cleeves's mysteries and their adaptation as the television program Shetland, Silva Screen has just released a CD of John Lunn's music from the TV series (individual tracks also available).

Interview with Evan Hunter (1994).

1963 ad for 87th Precinct
with Robert Lansing as
Steve Carella

Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) was the guest on Connecticut Voices in October 1994 to discuss his book There Was a Little Girl (featuring attorney Matthew Hope). He covers his background in art, the reaction to his novel The Blackboard Jungle and to the start of a new series with Hope, the beginning of the McBain pseudonym, the 87th Precinct novels, and the experience of working with Alfred Hitchcock on The Birds. "Paint the picture for the reader to see . . . with words," says Hunter.

A 2001 flashback with Ed McBain.

WYSO's The Book Nook recently rebroadcast Vick Mickunas's 2001 interview with Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter, 1926–2005) that coincided with the release of McBain's 87th Precinct novel Money, Money, Money. Mickunas describes it as one of his favorite interviews. In addition to Money, Money, Money, McBain discusses The Blackboard Jungle (the first Hunter novel), Cop Hater (the first McBain novel), The Chisholms (a Western), and Candyland (the innovative novel with the double byline of McBain and Hunter). He also talks about growing up in New York City, visiting the Apollo Theater, and working for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency (including editing P.G. Wodehouse).

70 years of Gallimard's Serie Noire.

French publisher Gallimard has published C'est l'histoire de la Série Noire (1945–2015) to mark the 70th anniversary of its crime fiction series Série Noire. Founded by Marcel Duhamel, Série Noire was instrumental in establishing the literary reputation of hardboiled authors such as Chester Himes (e.g., Coffin Ed Johnson/Grave Digger Jones series) and Charles Williams (e.g., Dead Calm). The Bibliothèque des littératures policière (Bilipo) in Paris is hosting an exhibition in conjunction with the book.

Van Dover receives 2015 Dove Award.

The latest recipient of the George N. Dove Award for contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction is J. K. Van Dover (Lincoln University, PA), author of books such as The Judge Dee Novels of R. H. van Gulik: The Case of the Chinese Detective and the American Reader; Making the Detective Story American: Biggers, Van Dine, and Hammett and the Turning Point of the Genre, 1925-1930; and Centurions, Knights, and Other Cops: The Police Novels of Joseph Wambaugh. He also has edited works such as The Critical Response to Raymond Chandler. The award is presented by the Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association; the chair of the Dove Award Committee is Rachel Schaffer (Montana State University Billings). Past Dove recipients include Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY), Douglas G. Greene, P. D. James, H. R. F. Keating, Maureen Reddy (Rhode Island College), and yours truly.

Routine Job (1946).

This film from Merlin Films shows investigators from New Scotland Yard on the trail of some stolen tea.

CFP for Craig Johnson/Longmire collection.

Clues Editorial Board members Rachel Schaffer (MSU Billings) and John Scaggs (Southwestern College [KS] and author, Crime Fiction) are coediting the McFarland essay collection Wanted, Read or Alive on Craig Johnson's novels with Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire and the Longmire TV series. Submission deadline is June 1, 2015. Read further details about the Call for Papers.

Model Murder Case (aka Girl in the Headlines, 1963).

Laurence Payne,
in the British TV series
The Sandbaggers (1978)

A model is shot, and Inspector Birkett (Ian Hendry) and Sergeant Saunders (Ronald Fraser) are on the case. Jeremy Brett and Jane Asher co-star. The film is based on The Nose on My Face (aka The First Body, 1961), the mystery debut of actor-writer Laurence Payne (whose credits include Ben-Hur, Ill Met by Moonlight, and a long-time role as detective Sexton Blake).

 

Ed McBain speaks.

Evan Hunter, NYPL

In November 2001, the radio program Focus 580 from Illinois Public Media featured Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter, 1926–2005) discussing his early career and his pseudonyms; his writing routine; his series with his "conglomerate hero," the 87th Precinct (including Money Money Money); his aborted book tour in the wake of 9/11; and his differences in approach between McBain and Hunter works. During the program the granddaughter of mystery author Craig Rice calls in; McBain finished Rice's The April Robin Murders after her death, and he explains how he came to be involved with the book.

Listen to the program here.

Creasey's Gideon's Way (TV, 1964-67).

John Creasey, thought to be one of the most prolific mystery authors ever, was born on September 17, 1908, in Surrey. The TV series Gideon's Way (aka Gideon C.I.D.) with John Gregson was based on Creasey's novels under the pseudonym J. J. Marric. These featured Scotland Yard's George Gideon (played by Jack Hawkins in the film Gideon's Day) and are important in the history of the police procedural. This episode, "The Tin God" (Nov. 1964), stars John Hurt in a tale about a gangster wanting revenge on the wife who put him in prison.

Hell Is a City (1960).

Stanley Baker in
Hell Is a City

Important in the evolution of the police procedural, Hell Is a City (U.S. book title: Somewhere in This City) was written by ex-police officer Maurice Procter as the first of his Granchester series. Directed by Val Guest (The Quatermass Xperiment), the film features the always interesting Stanley Baker, Billie Whitelaw, and Donald Pleasence. Baker's Inspector Harry Martineau hunts for an prison escapee in gritty Manchester (filmed on location).