Clues 30.2: Paranormal mysteries.

Just in time for Halloween, Clues 30.2 has been published—a theme issue on paranormal mysteries guest edited by Agatha and Macavity nominee A. B. Emrys. A quick rundown of the content appears below; I'll insert links once the articles are uploaded to the McFarland Metapress Web site. Go here for details on ordering the issue or subscribing. The cover features Kevin Bacon in Stir of Echoes.

Introduction: From Psychical Investigation to Paranormal Detective  A. B. EMRYS (emerita, University of Nebraska-Kearney). The guest editor of this Clues theme issue on paranormal mysteries introduces the issue, outlining the themes of the contributor essays and mentioning authors such as Alice and Claude Askew, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hamlin Garland, Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpinar, Fitz-James O’Brien, Sandra West Prowell, and Ian Rankin.

What Are They? The Pseudo-Mystery Stories of Fitz-James O’Brien PETE ORFORD The works of Fitz-James O’Brien are largely forgotten. The author considers how two of O’Brien’s works resemble early detective fiction and assesses how the stories’ hero, Harry Escott, both conforms to and subverts the figure of the detective as presented by the bookending icons of C. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes.

Literature for the People: The Paranormal Mysteries of Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar ÖZGÜR ÇIÇEK (Binghamton University, SUNY) and IRMA KERTUNA-HOWISON (Beykent University, Istanbul). The authors examine Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s paranormal mysteries in the context of the modernization of the late Ottoman Empire. His popular style, distinctive from other Westernizing movements at the time, as well as his incorporation of traditional narrative techniques, reveal how Gürpınar hybridizes the Western genre of paranormal mystery in early Turkish literature.

CSΨ: Occult Detectives of the Fin de Siècle and the Interpretation of Evidence SARAH CROFTON (King's College, London). Early occult-detective fiction aped the familiar detective formula, playfully substituting its basis in criminalistics for psychical research. In disrupting the archetype, it draws attention to a gap traditionally elided in detective fiction but at the heart of occultism: that between proof in its absolute sense and the persuasive proof of a convincing story.

Aylmer Vance and the Paradox of the Paranormal OLIVER TEARLE (Loughborough University, UK). How can the ever-mysterious world of the supernatural be successfully joined with the detective story, a genre that thrives on tying up loose ends in the narrative? Through a comparison of some of the best-known fictional psychical detectives and investigators, this article seeks to explore the important issues surrounding this hybrid genre.

Beyond the Border: The Author as Occult Detective in Hamlin Garland’s The Mystery of the Buried Crosses TIM PRCHAL (Oklahoma State University). Occult detectives probe fictional mysteries rooted in the supernatural. In The Mystery of the Buried Crosses (1939), Hamlin Garland recounts his investigation into a real-life mystery involving spiritualism. Like the fictional detectives, Garland urges readers to ponder the borders of their physical world but offers no definitive stance on supernatural intrusions.

Montana Gothic: Sandra West Prowell’s Phoebe Siegel Mysteries RACHEL SCHAFFER (Montana State University Billings). Montana author Sandra West Prowell blends gothic and paranormal elements, including mysterious mansions, ghostly sightings, and prophetic dreams, as she examines issues of social justice, particularly for women and Native Americans, and highlights Native American spirituality, all from the irreverent point of view of private investigator Phoebe Siegel.

Ghosts and Skeletons: Metaphors of Guilty History in Ian Rankin’s Rebus Series ERIN E. MacDONALD (Fanshawe College, Canada). The author examines Ian Rankin’s use of the gothic convention of the ghost in Black and Blue, Dead Souls, Set in Darkness, and “The Very Last Drop.” In these works, ghosts and skeletons are used as metaphors for Detective Inspector John Rebus’s guilt over past mistakes and for the dark past of his home city, Edinburgh.

Ghost-Seeing and Detection in Stir of Echoes MURRAY LEEDER (Carleton University, Canada). The author explores the links between the ghost story and the classical detective story, using as a case study the 1999 film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s Stir of Echoes (1959). The author explores the relationship of the restless dead to the living as well as the investment of the detective with powers to see a secret world hidden from everyday human vision.

The Mystifying Rationale of Psychic Detection EDEN LEONE (Bowling Green State University, OH). Through an examination of the USA Network series Psych (2006–), the author discusses how the psychic detective subverts the model of rational detection as exemplified by Sherlock Holmes.

ESSAY
Homicide and Home-icide: Exhuming Ireland’s Past in the Detective Novels of Tana French SHIRLEY PETERSON (Daemen College, NY). Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series features police procedurals in which homicide investigations act as a social critique of “home-cide” in the “new” Ireland spawned by the economic boom known as the Celtic Tiger. Dublin is a crime scene in which victims of its inconvenient past refuse to stay buried until justice is served.

BOOK REVIEWS
Stephen Knight. The Mysteries of the Cities: Urban Crime Fiction in the Nineteenth Century. DANIEL STEIN
Christine A. Jackson. The Tell-Tale Art: Poe in Modern Popular Culture and Paul Meehan. Horror Noir: Where Cinema’s Dark Sisters Meet JIM MANCALL
A Land Down Under: Recent Crime Fiction and Nonfiction from Australia STEPHEN KNIGHT

The return of The Female Detective (1864).

It often happens to us detectives . . . that we are the first movers in matters of great ultimate importance to individuals in particular, and the public at large (Forrester, The Female Detective 6)

Due out today from the British Library (distrib. U Chicago P) is The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester (pseud. of James Redding Ware), an important work in the evolution of the fictional female detective with the title character, who uses the name Miss Gladden. This edition has a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith and an introduction by Mike Ashley. Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints also has reissued The Female Detective with Revelations of a Lady Detective (1864, attrib. to W. S. Hayward) under the title The First Female Detectives.

Margaret Millar's "Rose's Last Summer" (1960).

In "Rose's Last Summer" (October 1960 episode of Thriller, directed by Arthur Hiller and based on the book by Edgar winner and Grand Master Margaret Millar), Mary Astor plays an alcoholic former actress who is found dead under mysterious circumstances. A suspicious friend (Lin McCarthy) teams up with her ex-husband (Jack Livesey) to investigate.

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).

Barry Nelson debuts as James Bond, 1954.

Barry Nelson as
James Bond in
"Casino Royale"

The Paley Center for Media recalls that today in 1954, Barry Nelson became the first actor to portray James Bond (in "Casino Royale," on Climax!).

McCloy, Moyes, and White reissued.

Among the books just reissued in the Arcturus Crime Classics series:

• MWA Grand Master Helen McCloy, Through a Glass, Darkly (1950). A doppelganger means trouble for a teacher and psychiatrist Basil Willing. The New York Times deemed it one of the best mysteries of 1950. Wrote Dorothy B. Hughes about the book in the Dec. 3, 1950, Washington Post, "Not since the late Bayard Veiller's 'Bait for a Tiger' has this reader been filled with such actual fear by a printed page."

• Patricia Moyes, Who Saw Her Die? (aka Many Deadly Returns, 1970). In this Edgar-nominated novel, Detective Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett must figure out how a widow died.

• Ethel Lina White, Some Must Watch (1933). A killer preys on vulnerable women in this novel by the author of The Lady Vanishes that was adapted as Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase. 

Woolrich's Fear in the Night (1947).

A man is uncertain if his dream of committing murder is just a dream—or reality. The film, based on "And So to Death" (1941, later repr. as "Nightmare") by Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym of William Irish, stars Star Trek's DeForest Kelley.

Happy birthday, Ed McBain/Evan Hunter.

To commemorate today's birthday of the late police procedural pioneer Ed McBain (aka author-screenwriter Evan Hunter, born in New York City in 1926), why not watch this clip from Cop Hater (1958)?

Eyes in the Night (1942).

In Eyes in the Night (1942, dir. Fred Zinnemann), Edward Arnold plays a blind detective who uncovers a Nazi plot. The film is an adaptation of The Odor of Violets (1940) by Mystery Writers of America cofounder and Grand Master Baynard Kendrick (see also the TV program Longstreet based on Kendrick's work). The follow-up film, The Hidden Eye (1945), was scripted by MWA Grand Master George Harmon Coxe.

Happy birthday, Jill Ker Conway.

Author Jill Ker Conway, the first female president of Smith College, turns 78 tomorrow. Best known for her memoirs The Road from Coorain and True North, Conway also wrote Overnight Float (2000) with Elizabeth T. Kennan (former president of Mt. Holyoke College) under the pseudonym Clare Munnings. Overnight Float features a college chaplain pursuing the killer of a college official.

Hammett's "Two Sharp Knives" (1949).

 

In the 1949 Studio One production of Dashiell Hammett's "Two Sharp Knives" (1934), a police chief has his doubts about the case of a man accused of murder. The episode features Abe Vigoda along with a cameo by Hammett and is directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (Papillon, Patton, Planet of the Apes). Note that there is also a 1942 radio version of "Two Sharp Knives" from Suspense.

Exhibition: Famous Trials and Their Legacies.

Jodie Foster in Sommersby

UC–Berkeley's online exhibition "Famous Trials and Their Legacies" looks at cases such as the Salem witch trials and the Martin Guerre episode that was the basis for the films The Return of Martin Guerre and Sommersby.

"Leviathan Five" (1964).

In Kraft Suspense Theatre's "Leviathan Five" (1964), scientists face a desperate choice when they are unable to escape from their underground facility. Featuring Andrew Duggan, Arthur Kennedy, Frank Maxwell, Frank Overton, Harold Stone, and Robert Webber, the episode was scripted by Berne Giler, David Giler, and The Big Heat's William McGivern.

Nominating mystery authors for halls of fame.

Consider nominating distinguished mystery authors for halls of fame that exist throughout the country. Quite often, genre writers are overlooked for these honors or are nominated for some other achievement (e.g., Celestine Sibley was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame for her journalism rather than her mysteries; Mildred Wirt Benson is a member of the U Iowa School of Journalism Hall of Fame for her reporting credentials, although her Nancy Drew novels are mentioned).

To be considered for nomination, writers usually need some connection to the particular state (e.g., birth or a minimum term of residence) and a body of work.

Anna Katharine Green.
NYPL

Links to halls of fame appear below. I have nominated police procedural pioneer Ed McBain/Evan Hunter and important early mystery author Anna Katharine Green for the New York State Writers Hall of Fame and, for New Jersey's hall of fame, Ho-ho-kus's Metta Fuller Victor (author of The Dead Letter [1866], the first American detective novel).

State Halls of Fame Devoted to Writers

East Tennessee. It appears the next nominations process will open in June 2013.

Georgia. Current nominees include Mignon Ballard and Virginia Lanier.

Minnesota. Nominated writers must have links to Minnesota, either through birth or residence in the state while producing a body of work. A good candidate for nomination would be Haycraft-Queen lister Mabel Seeley.

Missouri. 2012 Quill Award inductee is Ridley Pearson.

Nevada.

New York. In addition to my nominations of Hunter and Green (mentioned above), another appropriate nominee would be Brewster's Rex Stout—something that the Wolfe Pack should back.

North Carolina. Elizabeth Daniels Squire was inducted in 2006 and Manly Wade Wellman in 1996.

Oklahoma. Jean Hager was inducted in 1992, Carolyn Hart in 1993, and William Bernhardt in 1997.

South Carolina. Does not appear to have a nominations process open to the public. Mickey Spillane was inducted in 2012.

Texas. Established by the Friends of the Fort Worth Public Library to recognize authors who have contributed to the literary heritage of Texas. Bill Crider was inducted in 2010.

Wisconsin Writers Wall of Fame. Sponsored by the Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library. August Derleth was inducted in 1997.

Other
Alabama Men's Hall of Fame.

Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.

Alaska Women's Hall of Fame. Deadline for nominations: November 1, 2012.

Arizona Women's Hall of Fame.

Evan Hunter on Hitchcock this week on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Evan Hunter, NYPL.

This week, BBC Radio 4 features Me and Hitch, the memoir by Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) on his sometimes fraught working relationship with Alfred Hitchcock on projects such as The Birds and Marnie. Episodes usually may be heard online for up to week after broadcast.

Fri Forgotten Bks: Murder of the Man Next Door by Peter Malloch (1966).

He settled down with his newspaper unaware that life was ebbing away in the silent darkness, so close at hand.
—Peter Malloch, Murder of the Man Next Door 53

Philandering salesman Henry Clayter has been shot dead at his door, and there is no shortage of suspects for Inspector Donald Grant. Was it Clayter's long-suffering wife, who had just informed him that she was leaving him? Was it a local tough, angry at Clayter's attempt to pick up his girlfriend? Was it a colleague obsessing over Clayter's past relationship with his wife? Or was it someone else?

Malloch's brisk, workmanlike prose provides deft portraits of people who are leading lives of quiet desperation in a seemingly sleepy British neighborhood.

Malloch was just one pseudonym of Glaswegian author (and former Canadian resident) William Murdoch Duncan (1909–75). He published more than 200 novels and more than 20 novellas/short stories over the course of his career, beginning with Doctor Deals with Murder (1944); an Evening Times article of August 6, 1970, stated that he could produce a thriller in a fortnight. His series characters include Inspector (later Superintendent) Flagg, Sugar Kane (pause for groan at pun), Solo Malcolm, and Mr. Sandyman.

Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate (1971).

Based on the 1970 book by Doris Miles Disney, Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate features Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, Mildred Natwick, and Sylvia Sidney as elderly women who create an alluring, fictitious dating profile as a joke and reap sinister results. Prescient in terms of today's concerns with online safety, it was the precursor to the Snoop Sisters TV series.

Faulkner tries to obtain his royalties.

William Faulkner.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Div

As Dale Stinchcomb of Harvard's Houghton Library describes, William Faulkner in 1926 tried to extract royalties due to him from Four Seas, which had published a collection of his poetry. The amount—$81—may seem paltry to modern sensibilities, but it translates to approximately $1000 in today's dollars.

Photographer-director Gordon Parks at 100.

Gordon Parks's
autobiography, available
from MN Hist Soc P

NYC's Howard Greenberg Gallery marks the upcoming centenary of the birth of photographer and Shaft director Gordon Parks with two exhibitions opening today:

•  "Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, and 'Invisible Man,'" which runs through October 27. It includes Parks's photographs published in Life at the time of the publication of Ellison's Invisible Man.

• "Gordon Parks: Centennial," which also runs through October 27, features Parks's work over 50 years, including a famous civil rights portrait that invokes Grant Wood's "American Gothic."

Other Parks exhibitions:
• "Gordon Parks: 100 Moments." Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL. Through December 1.

• "Gordon Parks: Crossroads." Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Through September 25.

The long-suffering bookseller.

Today Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores by Jen Campbell goes on sale on U.S. shores. Campbell, who worked in Ripping Yards and Edinburgh Books, began collecting deathless patron queries heard on the job; her experiences confirm that booksellers have endured much. One sample:

Customer: I read a book in the eighties. I don't remember the author, or the title. But it was green, and it made me laugh. Do you know which one I mean?

Here is a BBC Open Book piece on the book.

Campbell is now writing a sequel and invites submissions from booksellers and librarians.

Vincent Price in Rinehart's The Bat (1959).

Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead star in the third film of the 1920 play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. Moorehead is a mystery writer hosting an array of guests searching for hidden money, as the notorious killer The Bat threatens the residents.

UCLA showcases the career of Rod Serling.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive continues its look at the career of Rod Serling—with special attention to his work outside of Twilight Zone and Night Gallery—through September 19. Coming up are his celebrated Requiem for a Heavyweight (and "The Man in the Funny Suit," which focuses on the making of Requiem) as well as Planet of the Apes; lesser known is The Yellow Canary (1963), in which Pat Boone plays a musician whose son is kidnapped. In addition, the archive showed Let Us Continue, a U.S. Information Agency short film written by Serling in the wake of the JFK assassination that profiled President Lyndon Johnson and his public policy interests. Also on view was the 1969 pilot for "The New People" (which bears a resemblance to Lost) written by Serling and starring Richard Kiley.


Update. Television Obscurities discusses an alternative version of The New People pilot.

"The Squeeze" (1953), with Dick Powell.

"The Squeeze" (1953), an episode of Four Star Playhouse, features Dick Powell as a safecracker turned club owner who discovers that his former criminal cohorts want him dead. Directed by a pre-Kiss Me Deadly Robert Aldrich and written by Blake Edwards, it also stars Richard Jaeckel, Regis Toomey, and Herb Vigran.

100 years of Syd Hoff.

There are a few ways to mark tomorrow's centenary of the late author-illustrator Syd Hoff (Danny and the Dinosaur, etc.):

• The exhibition "Syd Hoff: Finding Home" is on display at the Miami Beach Regional Library until October 1. Its curator, Dina Weinstein, wrote the article  "Are Syd Hoff's Books Jewish?".

• Hoff's niece, Carol Edmonston, has been working on an enhanced Web site featuring his life and work. It includes his children's books, advertising, cartoons, murals, and radical works under the pseudonym A. Redfield. Hoff also published short stories in periodicals such as Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine.

• Cartoonist Mike Lynch highlights on his blog a rather wonderful book, Collier Collects Its Wits (1941), which features self-portraits by cartoonists such as Hoff ("a citizen of the Bronx [since] 1912") and Charles Addams.

A selection of Faber's mystery cover art.

Some historical samples of Faber's online archive of cover art include the following mystery works:

• The Black Tower by P. D. James (1975)

• Death at Crane's Court by Eilis Dillon (1953; new ed. from Rue Morgue P)

• Death by Request by Romilly John and K[atherine]. John (1933). Romilly was the son of painter Augustus John and the half-brother of cellist Amaryllis Fleming, half-sister of Ian Fleming.

George Antheil, NYPL

• Death in the Dark by Stacey Bishop (aka composer George Antheil, 1930)

• An English Murder by Cyril Hare (aka Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, 1951)

• Famous Crimes, retold by "The Prince of Criminologists," William Roughead (1935)


• The Mummy Case by Dermot Morrah (1933; review here)

• The Ticker-Tape Murder by Milton Propper (1930; review here; partially serialized in the Border City Star, parts 1, 2, 3)

• A Tomb with a View by BBC producer Lance Sieveking (1950)

And of interest to Rex Stout fans:
• Forest Fire by Stout (1934; review here)
• Mr. Cinderella by Stout (1939; better cover of U.S. ed. here; review here)

Sayers's "Suspicion," on screen.

This September 1951 episode of Studio One, "Mr. Mummery's Suspicion," is based on Dorothy L. Sayers's short story "Suspicion" (1933) and features Roland Young as a man who fears he may be the target of poisoning.

New book on Pauline E. Hopkins, early mystery writer.

Pauline Hopkins and the American Dream by Washington College's Alisha Knight (U of Tennessee P, 2012) looks at the career of African American editor-writer Hopkins (1859–1930) and has been highly recommended by Choice Reviews. Hopkins wrote "Talma Gordon" (1900), a significant work in the timeline of American mystery.

August 1979: Hart to Hart debuts.

Robert Wagner in Hart to Hart

The Paley Center for Media remembers the debut of Hart to Hart on August 25, 1979.

Remembering Phyllis Thaxter: Cheever/Armstrong's "The Five-Forty-Eight."

In "The Five-Forty-Eight," a 1960 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Phyllis Thaxter, who died on August 14 at age 92, portrays a secretary determined to even the score with her nasty former boss. Based on a short story by John Cheever (for which Raymond Carver wrote a sequel, "The Train"), it was scripted by Edgar winner Charlotte Armstrong.

What coroner's inquests reveal.

Australian explorer Robert O'Hara Burke (of Burke and Wills
fame, NYPL). A mock coroner's inquiry in 2012
looked into the cause of their deaths in 1861.

In this podcast, researcher Kathleen Chater discusses the records of coroner's inquests housed in the UK's National Archives.

Lovesey on Conan Doyle and the Olympics.

The Public Domain Review provides a revised version of Peter Lovesey's 2002 article on Arthur Conan Doyle's role in the development of the Olympics. Lovesey began his literary career writing about sports (His first Sergeant Cribb novel, Wobble to Death, deals with a six-day race in the Victorian era that turns deadly.)

"... Underdog Is Here."

The defender of Sweet Polly
Purebread, on the job.

On Gary Shapiro's From the Bookshelf, Mark Arnold discusses his book Created and Produced by Total Television Productions: The Story of Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, and the Rest. Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo are now on DVD.

"Committed" (with Alan Ladd, 1954).

In this December 1954 episode of GE Theater introduced by Ronald Reagan and starring Alan Ladd and John Howard, a mystery writer faces a frame-up for murder and confinement in a mental institution. Its previous incarnation was the 1949 "Daytime Nightmare"—an episode of the radio series Box 13, also featuring Ladd.

Ed McBain, just out on DVD.

As Television Obscurities notes, Timeless Media Group has just released 87th Precinct: The Complete Series on DVD. This short-lived (1961–62) series starred Robert Lansing (as Steve Carella) and Norman Fell (as Meyer Meyer).

Chicago's Planet Pulp exhibition.

The exhibition "Planet Pulp: A Tribute Exhibition to Pulp Magazine Art" is on view until October 7 at Gallery Provocateur in Chicago; some sample works can be seen online.

2012 Dove Awardees: Roberts, Charles.

The Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association has selected this year's recipients of the George N. Dove Award: Eileen Roberts and author Kate Charles, for their work on the long-running Mystery and Crime Weekend at St. Hilda's College, Oxford. The award will be presented during this year's conference on August 17–19.

The Dove Award, named for the late distinguished mystery scholar George N. Dove, recognizes contributions to the serious study of mystery and crime fiction. Past recipients include Douglas G. Greene, the late H. R. F. Keating, Catherine Ross Nickerson, and yours truly.

Clara Foltz, pioneering CA lawyer.

In this appearance at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, IA, Barbara Allen Babcock discusses her book Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz. Foltz, the first woman admitted to the California Bar, proposed the establishment of public defenders.

Faulkner's "An Error in Chemistry," on screen.

"An Error in Chemistry" (1954) is an episode of Climax! adapted from a 1946 EQMM story by William Faulkner (one of his stories with lawyer Gavin Stevens collected in Knight's Gambit). Edmond O'Brien is a carnival huckster who readily confesses to killing his wife; also featured is Lon Chaney Jr.

Journal issue, law and gender in 19C England.

Edward Bulwer Lytton, NYPL.

The latest issue of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies focuses on law and gender in nineteenth-century England, including articles on Wilkie Collins's The Law and the Lady (1875) as well as Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Edward Bulwer Lytton.

Dirda on Ross Thomas, Robert L. Fish.

In this piece for American Scholar, Michael Dirda goes on a jaunt to Frederick (MD)'s Wonder Book & Video, praising the skill of Ross Thomas's The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (1971) and the sense of humor of Robert L. Fish along the way.
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

The Lodger redux: Man in the Attic (1953).

Following up on yesterday's Lodger post, the Internet Archive offers a 1953 version: Man in the Attic, with Jack Palance. The New York Times reviewer called it a "trashy, unimaginative shellacking of an original masterpiece," although Palance himself received praise.

New score for Hitchcock's The Lodger.

Ivor Novello in
The Lodger (1926)

Today Silva Screen releases Nitin Sawhney's new score to Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger (1926; based on the book by Marie Belloc Lowndes), in which a mysterious boarder is suspected to be a serial killer at large in London.

Auction results, Poe Mummy story; Conan Doyle.

The Christie's auction on June 22 yielded some interesting results:

William Faulkner.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photos Div.

• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Illust. Sidney Paget. 1st ed. London: George Newnes, 1892. $1500.

• Edgar Allan Poe, "Some Words with a Mummy," "Valley of Unrest," and "The City in the Sea," April 1845. $313.

• William Faulkner, Soldiers' Pay. 1st ed. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926. $11,875. Faulkner's first novel, with a World War I subject.

• Delightful 1969 illustration by Charles Addams of Wednesday Addams metamorphosing into a werewolf while reading The Werewolf of Paris. $4000.

• "Get into Books" illustration from 1983 by Sandra Boynton. $4000.

• "Sing Out for Books" illustration from 1965 by Hilary Knight (known as the illustrator of the Eloise series by Kay Thompson). $875.

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

Conan Doyle speaks (1927).

The Public Domain Review features, via the Internet Archive, a 1927 Fox newsreel interview with Arthur Conan Doyle, in which he discusses the genesis of Sherlock Holmes, letters he receives about Holmes, and his interest in spiritualism.

Hear excerpts from July 10th Nancy Drew panel.

Nancy Drew panelists at the Amer
Women Writers Nat Museum. Back row:
Elizabeth Foxwell, Ann Hudak.
Front row: Kathy Harig, Leona Fisher

I've posted some audio clips from my July 10th panel "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" at the American Women Writers National Museum:

• Leona Fisher (Georgetown University) on Mildred Wirt Benson and her often difficult relationship with the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

• Ann Hudak (curator, Nancy Drew & Friends exhibition, U-MD) reads a hilarious quote regarding the "dangers" of the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

• Kathy Harig (Mystery Loves Company, Oxford, MD) on Chassie West's involvement with the series.

• The panelists discuss the reactions of librarians and the public to the Nancy Drew series.

Mr. District Attorney in popular culture.

Long before Law & Order, there was Mr. District Attorney. In "The Pastiche Prosecutor: A Speculative Introduction to Mr. District Attorney" (Green Bag 15.3 [2012]: 303-38), Ross E. Davies (School of Law, George Mason University) discusses this crime-fighting pioneer inspired by New York prosecutor (later governor and presidential candidate) Thomas E. Dewey and featured in radio, television, and film series as well as comic books.  The article includes a sample (with illustrations) of "Smashing the Taxicab Racket" from Mr. District Attorney on the Job (1941).
 (Hat tip to the Law and Humanities blog)

Today's Nancy Drew panel, door prizes, and Mildred Wirt Benson.

Today's noon panel that I'm moderating at the American Women Writers National Museum in Washington, DC, is particularly

appropriate. It's on "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" (on the history and enduring appeal of this girl sleuth, with George-town's Leona Fisher; Mystery Loves Company's Kathy Harig; and University of Maryland-College Park's Ann Hudak, curator of the "Nancy Drew and Friends" exhibition) and takes place on the birthday of Mildred Wirt Benson (1905–2002), who wrote the first seven Nancy Drew books as well as numerous other girls' series books. Kathy Harig promises some Nancy Drew door prizes for some lucky attendees.

My events page is here.

The mysteries of G. W. M. Reynolds.

G. W. M. Reynolds.  NYPL

In this podcast, BBC Radio 3 discusses the often hardscrabble life of G. W. M. Reynolds (1814–79), whose serial The Mysteries of London (1844–56) featuring the seamy side of the city was wildly popular, but he was decidedly unpopular with Dickens for his appropriation of Mr. Pickwick. Stephen Knight examines Reynolds's work in the recent Mysteries of the Cities.

July 10 panel on Nancy Drew.

A reminder that I'll be moderating a panel on Tuesday, July 10, at the American Women Writers National Museum in Washington, DC: "Derring-Do and Nancy Drew Us In" (on the history and enduring appeal of this girl sleuth, with Georgetown's Leona Fisher; Mystery Loves Company's Kathy Harig; and University of Maryland-College Park's Ann Hudak, curator of the "Nancy Drew and Friends" exhibition). My events page is here.

Update. Kathy Harig promises some Nancy Drew door prizes for some lucky attendees.

The return of Hughes's The Expendable Man.

Today marks the reissue of Dorothy B. Hughes's Edgar-nominated The Expendable Man (1963) by New York Review of Books Classics; this edition has an afterword by Walter Mosley. In Crime & Mystery, H. R. F. Keating called the book, which centers on the death of a female hitchhiker, "one of the great trick novels of crime fiction." Anthony Boucher thought it "a splendid novel."

Peggy Bacon: Artist, mystery writer.

The exhibition "Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon" at the Smithsonian's Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (on view until Nov. 4, but some materials are posted online) shows the artistic work and various connections of Bacon (1895–1987) with Diego Rivera, Alfred Stieglitz, Andrew Wyeth, and others, but also mentions that she was an Edgar nominee for The Inward Eye (1952, aka Lady Marked for Murder; adapted for Robert Montgomery Presents, 1952). Her illustration work includes The Nameless Cat (1954) by Richard and Frances Lockridge.

"Good eeev-ening."

The BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans follows up its profile of Graham Greene with one on Alfred Hitchcock (although listeners may be startled to hear the climatic scene on the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur attributed to Vertigo).

You also can go here to see Hitchcock's appearance on What's My Line.

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.

Hammett's Secret Agent X-9 on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Lloyd Bridges in
Secret Agent X-9 (1945)

This week, a dramatization of Secret Agent X-9—originally a comic-strip collaboration between Dashiell Hammett and artist Alex Raymond— airs on BBC Radio 4 Extra, starring Connie Booth. Episodes usually may be heard for up to a week after broadcast.

In Continental Op news, Hammett's Red Harvest was selected as part of the Library of Congress' "Books That Shaped America" exhibition.

The case of Alger Hiss on SpyCast.

In this podcast from the International Spy Museum, Christina Shelton discusses her new book Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason about the former State Department official accused by Time senior editor Whittaker Chambers of spying for the Soviets.

Frances Fyfield on aging; Graham Greene.

Some pieces of interest from BBC Radio:

Writer Frances Fyfield

• Edgar nominee Frances Fyfield on the effects of aging on artists

• The series The New Elizabethans profiles Graham Greene.

Colin Dexter this week on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Colin Dexter reads his story "The Double Crossing," in which unexpected death poses problems for a vacationing couple and Detective Inspector Lewis. Episodes usually can be heard for up to a week after broadcast.

Noir films online, the Public Domain Review.

Sterling Hayden in
Suddenly (1954)

The Public Domain Review features the following films that include some noir:

• Five Minutes to Live (1961): Johnny Cash is involved in a bank job; also features Ron Howard, Merle Travis, and Vic Tayback.

• The Lodger (1927). Early film by Alfred Hitchcock of Marie Belloc Lowndes's work about a suspected Jack the Ripper.

• Quicksand (1950): Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre in a tale of theft that goes sour.

• Scarlet Street (1945): In this Fritz Lang film, con artists Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea set their sights on cashier Edward G. Robinson.

• Suddenly (1954): Frank Sinatra, hired to assassinate the president, takes a family hostage. Also stars Sterling Hayden as a sheriff.

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

What they're reading on the L.

Commuters waiting for southbound
trains, Chicago, 1941. Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Div.

The Chicago Tribune has this cool rendering of what some commuters are reading by L stop. Some picks: On Writing and Night Shift by Stephen King; The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told ed. Martin H. Greenberg; The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson; and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre.

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.