Panel on DC-area mysteries today.

Today I'm moderating a panel at noon at the American Women Writers National Museum in Washington, DC: "Mysterious Women Who Know Their Place" on DC-area mysteries, with Donna Andrews, Karna Small Bodman, Ellen Crosby, and Marcia Talley, and including some past authors who used DC locales.

The mystery pulp past of Ray Bradbury.

The versatile Ray Bradbury, who died Tuesday at age 91, wrote some mystery stories early in his career. These include the following:

• The Candy Skull (1948; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984)
• Dead Men Rise Up Never (1945; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984)
• Half-Pint Homicide (1944; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984)
• I'm Not So Dumb! (1945; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984)
• It Burns Me Up! (1944; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984)
• Killer, Come Back to Me (1944; Molle Mystery Theater adaptation starring Richard Widmark, 1946)
• The Long Way Home (1945; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984)
• The Small Assassin (1946; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984; TV episode, 1988; film, 2007)
• Wake for the Living (1947; rpt. A Memory of Murder, 1984)

Glimpses of the 87th Precinct.

Ed McBainamania: In addition to the clips above, see a promo for the 1961–62 87th Precinct series with Robert Lansing and Norman Fell here. I like the theme song.

Bill Dana channels Don Adams and William Powell.

In this clip from Emerson College, comedian Bill Dana does a quick take of Don Adams imitating William Powell's Thin Man.

"I was greeted like cancer."

Writer-producer William Froug turned 90 last week, and the Archive of American Television is highlighting a 2011 interview with him, in which he discusses Rod Serling's sense of humor, Twilight Zone episodes "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," writing detective novels and radio scripts, and other topics.

Web site with mystery course syllabi.

On behalf of the Literacy Committee of Mystery Writers of America, I am compiling a Web page with mystery course syllabi to assist instructors new to teaching mystery and detective fiction as well as those who wish to compare their approach to that of their colleagues.

The page also features a short video I produced, "A Gallery of American Mystery Writers," which I provide here as well. Only deceased writers are included in an effort to provide a historical panorama; availability of photographs also affected the video.

Happy birthday, G. K. Chesterton.

Illustration of Chesterton from
Hearst's International (Nov 1921)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born today in London in 1874. To honor the indefatigable critic, essayist, poet, novelist, children's party entertainer, and creator of wise sleuth Father Brown, you can do the following:

• Read his "A Defense of Detective Stories" (1901).

• Read his "The Admiral Eats His Hat: How to Write Detective Stories" (1921).  ". . . the very design of a detective story is a matter not of creation but of construction. . . . let the villain [be] . . . a very viper on the hearth."

• Read his "On Detective Novels" (1922). "...the detective story is . . . a drama of masks and not of faces."

• Watch Chesterton at Worcester College (1931).

Remembering veterans: The Reawakening; John Huston's Let There Be Light.

A WWI veteran in
The Reawakening (1919)

In honor of Memorial Day, you can view The Reawakening (1919), a short documentary on the rehabilitation of wounded World War I servicemen at a hospital near Chicago, as well as Let There Be Light (1946), John Huston's long-suppressed film (narrated by his dad, Walter) on World War II veterans with PTSD. Both films were restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Want to see a classic republished?

The Neglected Books blog calls our attention to the Hesperus Press competition, in which you can nominate an out-of-print book for republishing. The clock is ticking, though—the submission deadline is June 1. Hesperus tends to publish short, more obscure works that are in the public domain and are penned by well-known authors.

Don't mess with Louis.

The Forgotten Stories blog recalls Louis Hass, crime-fighting Philadelphia jeweler of 1919. (The Reading Eagle reveals he had another close call in 1924.)

Update. The Forgotten Stories blog has thanked the Bunburyist for providing additional information on Hass.

Alcott royalty smackdown.

Louisa May Alcott, NYPL

The Houghton Library blog reveals that Louisa May Alcott, in an 18-year period, raked in more than $100,000 in royalties, in comparison to Henry James ($58,503) and Herman Melville ($10,444). An approximate comparison in today's dollars would be $2.5 million for Alcott, $1.4 million for James, and $257,000 for Melville.

Coming up: Nancy Drew, DC mysteries panels.

I'm moderating two upcoming panels at the American Women Writers National Museum in Washington, DC: "Mysterious Women Who Know Their Place" on Friday, June 8 (on DC-area mysteries, with Donna Andrews, Karna Small Bodman, Ellen Crosby, and Marcia Talley, and including some past authors who used DC locales) and "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" on Tuesday, July 10 (on this girl sleuth's enduring appeal, with Georgetown's Leona Fisher, Mystery Loves Company's Kathy Harig, and University of Maryland-College Park's Ann Hudak). My events page is here.

Mystery highlights for May, Radio Hall of Fame.

Marcia Rodd, who appears
in "Murder with Malice,"
in Little Murders (1971)

May audio highlights at the Radio Hall of Fame include "Murder with Malice" (1974, with a son plotting the murder of his father) from CBS Radio Mystery Theater and "Accident According to Plan" (1945, with a coworker's jealousy taking a sinister turn) from The Whistler. Also included: the famed broadcast by Herbert Morrison of the May 6, 1937, Hindenburg disaster.

Clues today on Booklist Online.

Following up yesterday's post on The Bunburyist  I write about Clues: A Journal of Detection on Booklist's blog "Likely Stories"—part of Booklist's special focus on the mystery this month.

The Bunburyist today on Booklist Online.

I write today about The Bunburyist on the blog "Likely Stories"—part of Booklist's special focus on the mystery this month.

Mystery films in CCNY exhibition.

Mystery-related movies in City College of New York Libraries' exhibition "Cinematic Allusions to Literary Works" include Blow-Up (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) and The Killers (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1946). Mason Adams discussed the short story version of The Killers in "Hemingway's Nick Adams and the Creation of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe" in Clues 26.2 (2010).

Dickens, Drood, and Holmes.

Claude Rains as John Jasper
in The Mystery of
Edwin Drood (1935)

The University of Delaware Libraries exhibition "Dickens at 200," which runs until June 8, discusses the uncompleted Mystery of Edwin Drood, including attempts by some authors to have Sherlock Holmes solve the case and the 1914 mock trial of protagonist John Jasper that featured G. K. Chesterton as judge and George Bernard Shaw as jury foreman.

McBain/Hunter companion now available.

McFarland has now issued Ed McBain/Evan Hunter: A Literary Companion by Erin E. MacDonald, volume 3 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit (volume 1 on John Buchan; volume 2 on E. X., aka Elizabeth, Ferrars; volume 5 on Andrea Camilleri). In this work MacDonald, who wrote her dissertation on McBain, provides comprehensive coverage of the multifaceted career of this author/screenwriter and MWA Grand Master who was a pioneer of the police procedural and had an interesting working relationship with Alfred Hitchcock.

Batya Gur on film.

There's now a DVD available of Writing as I Should (2010), a film on Batya Gur (1947–2005), the Israeli mystery writer who created Jerusalem-based Chief Inspector (later Chief Superintendent) Michael Ohayon.

Poe's Bronx cottage wins award.

Sketch of Poe's cottage, NYPL

A newly restored residence of Edgar Allan Poe has received a major award for preservation. Poe lived in this cottage in the Bronx from 1846 to 1849; the Web site of the Bronx Historical Society also features a film about Poe's life in the Bronx. (Hat tip to the New York History blog)

Mystery-related Hirschfeld cartoons.

Truman Capote in Murder by Death

The Web site of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation features online images of the renowned cartoonist's work that reflect the entire span of his long career. Although the resource is a work in progress, those images with a mystery connection include Arsenic and Old Lace (with Boris Karloff, 1941), Basil Rathbone (as Sherlock Holmes, 1990, and in Witness for the Prosecution, 1957), The Bishop Murder Case (1929–30), Dial M for Murder (with Maurice Evans, 1953), Everett Sloane in Crime Doctor (1944), Florence Reed in The Shanghai Gesture (1928), Murder by Death (1976), and A Pin to See the Peepshow (1953).

Monash's "Body in the Library" exhibition.

Cover of the Detection Club's
Ask a Policeman, featured in the
Monash University exhibition

Monash University's "The Body in the Library' exhibition provides a rich visual panorama of mystery history and is on display until June 8. Online highlights include covers of wonderfully lurid works by Sax Rohmer, various Detection Club works, detective magazines, and one of the Dick Donovan series that is contemporary with the Holmes stories (series discussed in Clues 26.2). Not surprisingly for an Australian university, special attention is paid to Australian and New Zealand authors (such as Fergus Hume, Ngaio Marsh, Helen Simpson, and Arthur Upfield) and an Australian round-robin mystery novel of 1936. A welcome addition is "Clarice Dyke, the Female Detective" (1883) by Harry Rockwood (aka Ernest A. Young) that features an early female sleuth.

The empowerment of Judy Bolton.

The Trail of the Green Doll,
repr. Applewood Books

College of Staten Island-CUNY's Mary Jeanette Moran follows up her article in Clues on the ethic of care of Margaret Sutton's Judy Bolton with another in The Lion and the Unicorn on how reading and writing make Judy an effective sleuth.

Carleton Morse's 10 favorite mysteries, 1943.

In summer 1943 writer-producer Carleton E. Morse (of I Love a Mystery and One Man's Family radio fame) listed his favorite mysteries, which he planned to send to army camps. They are the following:

• Cleve F. Adams, Sabotage (1940)
• Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm (1938)
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
• Manning Coles, A Toast to Tomorrow (1941; aka Pray Silence, 1940)
• Mignon G. Eberhart, Murder by an Aristocrat (1933, film 1936)
• Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse (1928, mini-series 1978)
• Jonathan Latimer, Red Gardenias (1939)
• Philip MacDonald, The Rasp (1924, film 1931)
• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
• Rex Stout, The Red Box (1937)

Update. Photo of Carleton E. Morse.

A new use for the SH canon.

Christopher Morley. Library
of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Div.

Harvard's Houghton Library features an amusing 1944 letter from Baker Street Irregulars cofounder Christopher Morley, who sought guidance from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (part of the "Sacred Writings") as a prospective father of the bride. He also mentions colleague Vincent Starrett in a handwritten note.

Of related interest: a TLS round-up of recent SH-related works such as Michael Dirda's On Conan Doyle and Anthony Horowitz's House of Silk.

Whistler and Collins.

Collins's Woman in
White with Whistler's
White Girl on cover

The online edition of the letters of artist James McNeill Whistler features a few letters concerning attempts to link Whistler's The White Girl (1862) to Wilkie Collins's Woman in White (1859–60), a letter that reveals that Whistler liked Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Golden Calf (1883), and witty correspondence from Oscar Wilde. It looks like the 1906 letter from Arthur Conan Doyle is not yet online.

Alcott, her family, and Little Women.

Louisa May Alcott, ca. 1862
NYPL

Running until May 26, the exhibition "Louisa May Alcott: Family Life and Publishing Ventures" at Harvard's Houghton Library features materials on the Alcott family and the publication of Little Women. It's curated by Joel Myerson and Daniel Sheehy, editors of Alcott's thrillers, journals, and letters.

Boucher: Best debut mysteries of 1962.

In his NYT column of 2 Dec 1962, Anthony Boucher selected what he considered to be the best debut mysteries of the year:

• Daniel Broun, Counterweight (Edgar nominee)
• Kenneth Cook, Wake in Fright (film 1971)
• Robert L. Fish, The Fugitive (Edgar winner)
• S. B. Hough, The Bronze Perseus (aka The Tender Killer; appears on Barzun & Taylor's list of classic crime novels)
• Mark McShane, Seance (filmed as Seance on a Wet Afternoon, 1964; adapted as an opera, 2008)
• Estelle Thompson, A Twig Is Bent

Other authors mentioned, without book titles: Dick Francis (probably referring to Dead Cert, which is on the Barzun-Taylor list), Colin Watson (probably referring to Coffin, Scarcely Used), and Alan Williams (probably referring to Long Run South).

The Titanic at 100.

The Titanic, NYPL.

This week, BBC Radio 4 Extra marks the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic with readings of Walter Lord's A Night to Remember; letters from those on the Titanic; and recollections of those in Belfast, where the ship was built. Episodes usually may be heard for up to a week after broadcast.

Others may be interested in this Boston Globe story on the Titanic in photos; today's event in DC near the location of the Titanic memorial (although it promotes the canard that the Titanic band played "Nearer, My God, to Thee"); and my short story "Unsinkable," which appears in Crime through Time II.

Bram Stoker's contract for Dracula.

Illustration of
Bram Stoker from
Miss Betty, 1898

The Independent featured an interesting article on Bram Stoker's UK contract for Dracula that he wrote himself, which will be part of a new edition of the novel. He (no fan of literary agents, apparently) received a 20-percent royalty on the book, but had less favorable terms in the United States.

Valancourt Books' new edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite (1894) and Stoker's The Watter's Mou (1894) features a 1907 interview of Conan Doyle by Stoker.

Andrea Camilleri companion now available.

I'm happy to report that Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Lucia Rinaldi— no. 5 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit—is now out, some two months earlier than anticipated. This is a comprehensive treatment of the works of the creator of Inspector Salvo Montalbano and one of the few resources in English on the author's work that is available.

Clues 30.1: Newly discovered ss by S. S. Van Dine.

Clues vol 30, no. 1 has been published and includes the following:

• Clues reveals for the first time that S. S. Van Dine (aka Willard Huntington Wright, the creator of detective Philo Vance) published several short stories featuring an intellectual criminal; these were produced under another name well before Wright adopted the Van Dine pseudonym. Using archival evidence, Brooks Hefner (James Madison University) links these stories to Van Dine and discusses them in the context of highbrow/lowbrow debates, including Wright's 1928 essay "I Used to Be a Highbrow but Look at Me Now" and his short-lived term as editor of the Smart Set.

• Matthew McGuire (University of Western Sydney) discusses Scottish writer James Hogg's contributions to crime fiction via The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).

• Lucy Andrew (Cardiff University) analyzes the relationship between children and crime via The Boy Detective; or, The Crimes of London. A Romance of Modern Times (1865–66).

• Mark T. Decker (Bloomsburg University) looks at some intriguing connections between Allan Pinkerton's The Model Town and the Detectives (1876) and Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929).

• Dawn Keetley (Lehigh University) makes the case that certain novels with sexual crimes in the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo feature political commentary, disputing the majority of critical opinion.

• Michael Given (Stephen F. Austin State University) discusses the Hap and Leonard novels of Joe R. Lansdale, dubbing them "hard-boiled Southern noir."

• Phyllis M. Betz (La Salle University) looks at the complex relationship between the female narrator and queenpin Gloria Denton in Megan Abbott's Queenpin (2007).

• Kerstin Bergman (Lund University) explores the relationship between science and truth via CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Patricia Cornwell's The Scarpetta Factor (2009).

• Reviews of a new edition of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Henry Dunbar and Christopher Pittard's Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction.

Quote of the day.

Anna Katharine Green,
NYPL

". . . detective story writing is a peculiar field."

—from a review of Anna Katharine Green's Agatha Webb, Brooklyn Daily Eagle 21 Aug 1899: 4.

Happy birthday, Harriet Prescott Spofford.

Harriet Prescott Spofford,
n.d. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Div.

Poet and writer Harriet Prescott Spofford was born today in Calais, ME, in 1835. A notable figure in mystery fiction for her stories "In a Cellar" (1859), "Mr. Furbush" (1865), and "In the Maguerriwock" (1868) in terms of the development of the professional detective and the mystery story, Spofford published her work in the major periodicals of her day such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazar, and Scribner's Monthly. Her career of more than 60 years also included works of supernatural fiction such as "The Black Bess" (1868), and Spofford's "Her Story" (1872) is considered to be an important precursor to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic feminist work "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892). She died in 1921. (Clues articles on Spofford here and here)

Not a fan of Inspector Montalbano.

Luca Zingaretti as
Inspector Salvo Montalbano

Critical Studies in Television's Kim Akass doesn't think much of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano (now on view on BBC 4, broadcast as Detective Montalbano in the United States), taking issue with the portrayal of women. (The upcoming Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Lucia Rinaldi that I edited deals with Camilleri's treatment of women, among other topics.)

Happy centenary, Lucille Fletcher.

Inger Stevens in "The Hitch-Hiker"
Twilight Zone, season 1, 1960
(adapt. of Lucille Fletcher's
radio play)

Suspense writer and playwright Lucille Fletcher—best known for the Edgar-winning Sorry, Wrong Number (play, 1944; novel, 1948; adapted for film and TV, 1946, 1948, 1954, 1957, 1962–64, 1968, 1989)—was born today in Brooklyn, NY, in 1912. She wrote nine novels, three plays, and more than a dozen radio plays that include The Hitch-Hiker (1941; broadcast on the Mercury Theater, 1946). Fletcher, the first wife of Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, died in 2000.

Lee Child on the virtues of telling.

In this March 13 video from the Mercantile Library's Center for Fiction, Lee Child asserts that writers should "Tell, Don't Show: Why Writing Rules Are Mostly Wrong."

Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929).

Hitchcock makes a
cameo appearance in
Blackmail (1929)

BFI Screenonline looks at Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929), Britain's first full-length sound film. Although the video clips posted cannot be seen outside the United Kingdom, production stills can be viewed (but a sound test for Blackmail with Hitchcock and leading lady Anny Ondra can be seen here).

Allingham, Marsh on Why I Really Like This Book.

Recent episodes in Kate Macdonald's podcast Why I Really Like This Book address Margery Allingham's Albert Campion novel Coroner's Pidgin (1945) and Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn novel Death in a White Tie (1938).

Dean James on diverse characters in mystery.

In this video clip, Dean James (my coauthor on The Robert B. Parker Companion) talks about his gay vampire character Simon Kirby-Jones, which will be part of the discussion during his April 19 panel on "Colorful Crimes: Diverse Characters in Mysteries" at the Texas Library Association meeting.

Sign in, please.

Vincent Starrett, NYPL

The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door exhibition at UT-Austin's Harry Ransom Center shows the signatures of notable visitors to Frank Shay's Bookshop in New York; they signed the door to the bookshop from 1920 to 1925. Among those of interest to mystery fans: Theodore Dreiser, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Christopher Morley, and Vincent Starrett.

St. Lazare's most famous prisoner.

Mata Hari. NYPL.

DePaul University's interesting online exhibition "Saint Lazare as a Women's Prison 1794–1932" includes a section on its most famous prisoner: accused spy Mata Hari.

For sale: A large collection of Isaac Asimov.

Eureka Books in California is offering for sale a large collection of works by Isaac Asimov. Mystery fans may be interested in the following:

• 1968 hardcover edition of A Whiff of Death, Asimov's first mystery (no. 43, $500)

• Asimov's Mysteries (1968, no 44, $40), a collection of mystery/sci-fi stories

• Copies of More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976, nos. 73–75, signed, $200–$750), Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980, nos. 95–96, $250), and Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984, no. 121, $250). Some of Asimov's wonderful short mysteries in which the quiet waiter Henry always solves the case.

• Murder at the ABA (1976, no. 76, signed, $250)

• The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977, no. 82, $125)

• Two copies of Asimov's Sherlockian Limericks (1978, nos 85–86, $150–250)

• The Union Club Mysteries (1983, no. 112, $250), signed to the late Ellis Peters aficionado Sue Feder

(Hat tip to Fine Books & Collections)

Foxwell at LOC, March 14.

Alice Roosevelt
Longworth, sleuth
in two short stories
by Elizabeth Foxwell

I'm speaking at the Library of Congress's Pickford Theater on Wednesday, March 14 at noon on "My Life in Historical Mystery; or, It's All Elizabeth Peters's Fault." It's part of the Mysteries at Noon series sponsored by the LOC Professional Association. As March is Women's History Month, I will be highlighting the women writers and characters that have influenced my work in mystery fiction and nonfiction.

Foxwell on Zelda Popkin, Jewish Women's Archive.

Zelda Popkin, from
her autobiography
Open Every Door

For Women's History Month, the Jewish Women's Archive asked me to provide a post on mystery author Zelda Popkin (1898–1983) for its tumblr site Jewish Women Inspire. I've previously reviewed Popkin's Death Wears a White Gardenia (1938) and Murder in the Mist (1940) for Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books on The Bunburyist. Bosun Books has issued ebook editions of Death Wears a White Gardenia and Time Off for Murder; see also the Kirkus reviews of Popkin's So Much Blood (1944) and Dead Man's Gift (1941).

Happy birthday, William F. Nolan.

William F. Nolan was born today in Kansas City, MO, in 1928. He wrote Dashiell Hammett: A Casebook (1969) and Hammett: A Life at the Edge (1983), as well as paid tribute to Hammett, Chandler,

Michael York in
Logan's Run (1976)

and Gardner with his Black Mask Boys series. His work also crosses genre boundaries, including mystery, horror, western, fantasy, and sci-fi; he was an Edgar nominee for Space for Hire (1971), and he cowrote the sci-fi classic Logan's Run (1967) with George Clayton Johnson.

Mystery goodies on EUscreen.

EUscreen offers free online access to thousands of videos, stills, and other materials from European broadcasters. A quick tiptoe through the archives yielded the following:

• An August 1962 interview with Alfred Hitchcock regarding The Birds (in French and English) in which he refutes the idea of working with Grace Kelly again ("Ce n'est pas possible")

• On location in Ireland in 1966 for the film Casino Royale with John Huston and Deborah Kerr

• Two interviews (in French) with Georges Simenon (1959, 1967)

• A July 1958 interview (in French) with Leslie Charteris, creator of the Saint

• Still from a 1955 Dutch TV production of Gaslight

(Thanks to Critical Studies in Television)

Female spies in the Civil War.

S. Emma Edmonds, author of
Nurse and Spy in the
Union Army (1865). NYPL

Those unable to visit University of Maryland to see its exhibition "Women on the Border: Maryland Perspectives on the Civil War" by July 2012 can peruse it online; of special interest is the section on "Women as Soldiers and Spies."

Auden's "Guilty Vicarage."

W. H. Auden, right, with
Christopher Isherwood. Feb. 1939.
Photo by Carl Van Vechten.
Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Div

The discussion of volume 4 (Prose) of The Complete Works of W. H. Auden on Off the Shelf (RTE, Ireland) touches on Auden's "The Guilty Vicarage," his famous essay on the mystery. Auden, it should be noted, was the model for sleuth Nigel Strangeways for Nicholas Blake (aka poet Cecil Day Lewis).

Josephine Tey on Why I Really Like This Book.

The latest entry in Kate Macdonald's Why I Really Like This Book podcast discusses Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes (earlier entries in this series are on Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise and T. H. White's Darkness at Pemberley). Note that the Touchstone edition of Miss Pym Disposes is introduced by Robert Barnard.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Keep It Quiet, by Richard Hull (1935).

It is one of the mysteries of club life that almost every club periodically has at least one fantastic member who systematically steals the books from the circulating library. . . . For many years the thief, or thieves, had been content with detective stories . . . but when the thief changed his literary tastes and started on expensive volumes of memoirs and travel books, it was generally felt that Something had to Be Done . . . —Richard Hull, Keep It Quiet 46

The untimely demise of a cranky club member means blackmail and other unpleasantness in Richard Hull's Keep It Quiet (1935).

Whitehall Club secretary Ford thinks that he has had a narrow escape from scandal when the distracted chef confesses that he may have accidentally poisoned the perpetually irritating Mr. Morrison and the man's doctor agrees to go along with a verdict of heart failure. But soon typed missives begin to arrive indicating that someone else knows what has happened. They first dictate to the inefficient Ford, somewhat comically, about how the club should be run and then take a more sinister turn.

Keep It Quiet is filled with a delightfully sly humor and is a quick, breezy read at 191 pages.

Richard Henry Sampson (1896–1973) left the exciting(?) world of chartered accountancy for mystery writing after he read Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles (aka Anthony Berkeley Cox). Under the pseudonym Richard Hull, he is best known for his debut novel, The Murder of My Aunt (1934), although he produced some 14 additional novels after it plus one short story ("Mrs. Brierly Supplies the Evidence," Evening Standard, repr. EQMM Apr. 1952). Evidence of his sense of humor may be found in My Own Murderer (1940) where he named a villain Richard Henry Sampson.

Happy birthday, Edward D. Hoch.

Collection of Hoch's
Dr. Sam Hawthorne tales,
from Crippen & Landru

MWA Grand Master Edward D. Hoch was born today in Rochester, NY, in 1930. It's estimated that during his career, he published upward of 900 short stories, particularly in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM). He received an Edgar for "The Oblong Room" and an Anthony for "The Problem of the Potting Shed." He wrote "V-2," a story for me for Malice Domestic 8, and I had the pleasure of meeting this gracious man at one EQMM event. He died in 2008.

Ethel Lina White this week on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Margaret Lockwood and Michael
Redgrave in The Lady Vanishes
(dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Iris Carr (the inspiration for K. K. Beck's Iris Cooper) tries to figure out what happened to an elderly woman on board a train in Ethel Lina White's The Lady Vanishes. Go here for the schedule or to listen online; episodes usually may be heard for up to a week after broadcast.

Happy birthday, Anthony Gilbert.

David Farrar in They Met
in the Dark (1943;
adapt. of
Anthony Gilbert's
The Vanishing Corpse)

Lucy Beatrice Malleson—aka author Anthony Gilbert, member of the Detection Club, and a cousin of actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson—was born today in Upper Norwood, outside of London, in 1899. She published her first novel, the thriller The Man Who Was London, under the pseudonym J. Kilmeny Keith in 1925. The first Gilbert novel was The Tragedy at Freyne (1927), but the debut of her most well-known character, lawyer Arthur Crook, did not occur until Murder by Experts (1936). He went on to appear in more than 50 other novels, including Out for the Kill (1960). She also wrote an autobiography, Three-a-Penny (1940, under the pseudonym Anne Meredith); radio plays; and well-regarded short stories such as "You Can't Hang Twice" (EQMM, Nov. 1946) and "The Mills of God" (EQMM, Apr. 1969). Malleson died in 1973.

Twain's "Double-Barrelled Detective Story" (1901).

Mark Twain. Library of
Congress, Prints and
Photographs Div.

Included in the Morgan Library's online exhibition "Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress" are two handwritten pages of Twain's spoof "A Double-Barrelled Detective Story" (1901) with a unique view of The Great Detective at work.

Britain's first railway murder.

In this podcast from the UK National Archives, Kate Colquhoun discusses the first murder on Britain's railways in 1864, when an elderly banker was bludgeoned and his body thrown from the train. The case was a public sensation that involved a Scotland Yard detective who had previously worked with Inspector Whicher (see the Constance Kent, or Road Murder, case), a key piece of evidence left behind in the carriage, and a transatlantic chase of the suspect. It is the subject of Colquhoun's Mr. Briggs' Hat (US title: Murder in the First-Class Carriage).

Product of the Day: Mysteries & More mousepad.

An appropriate mousepad from the Mysteries & More Bookstore in Nashville, TN.

The many sides of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson
at age 25. NYPL

The online exhibition "Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850–1894" from the University of South Carolina Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections includes this great cover from Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher" (1884), artwork from various editions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as some interesting material on the relationship between Stevenson and poet W. E. Henley. Also featured are two portraits of Stevenson (posted here and here) by John Singer Sargent, who told Henry James that Stevenson was "the most intense creature I had ever met."

John le Carré at the movies.

Sean Connery in
The Russia House

You can still listen online to the episode "John le Carré at the Movies" from WQXR's Movies on the Radio program. Soundtracks covered include the 1979 and 2011 versions of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came In from the Cold; The Russia House; and Quincy Jones's score for The Deadly Affair.

Richard Marsh's Judith Lee, continued.

There's been a lot of interest in my review of Richard Marsh's hard-to-find Judith Lee stories (1912–16) since it appeared as part of Patti Abbott's series on Friday's Forgotten Books. Now Black Coat Press has issued The Complete Adventures of Judith Lee. According to editor Jean-Daniel Brèque, the edition includes the stories collected in Marsh's Judith Lee: Some Pages from Her Life (1912) and The Adventures of Judith Lee (1916), as well as "The Barnes Mystery" (a 1916 story from the Strand magazine). This is welcome news for fans of early female sleuths and Marsh.

Update, 1-22-16. There's another new edition of Judith Lee stories from Valancourt Books, edited by Minna Vuohelainen (Edge Hill University, UK)