I'm always interested in receiving proposals for the Mystery Companion series; prospective subjects should have a substantial body of work (loosely defined as a minimum of 25 books or a substantial combination of books, short stories, and other mystery-related works). For further details on submitting a proposal, contact me.
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| F. Tennyson Jesse |
On Creative Boom, Emily Gosling discusses an illustrated Chinese edition of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (some illustrations from the book included in the post). The artist is Klaus Kremmerz.
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| Arthur Conan Doyle. NYPL |
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| Lester Dent. The Dux, Chillicothe (MO) Business College yearbook, 1923, p. 106 |
There's a new call for proposals for a theme issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection: "Borders and Detective Fiction" (guest edited by Manina Jones, University of Western Ontario). Proposals are sought from a wide variety of critical, national, and cultural perspectives addressing how and why borders are represented in detective fiction, film,television, or other media (e.g., computer games, graphic novels, radio drama, podcasts).
Proposals are due November 1, 2021.
This is part of the series of short films produced from source material written by S. S. Van Dine and featuring Crabtree and Carr; see the previous blog posts on The Wall Street Mystery and The Trans-Atlantic Mystery.
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| Photo of Isokon Bldg by Yuriy Akopov. 2015. |
The modernist landmark Isokon Building—aka London's Lawn Road Flats—offers a short film on Agatha Christie's residence there from 1941 to 1947 (see below). It also is presenting an exhibition on Christie in its gallery. Christie lived and wrote there while her second husband, Max Mallowan, was on assignment in the Middle East and while she was working in the dispensary of University College Hospital.
Further reading: David Burke, The Lawn Road Flats: Spies, Writers and Artists
The Artists' Ensemble Theater (IL) performed a radio-play version of Agatha Christie's "The Curse of the Western Star," which can be heard here. The theater also offers a podcast of short radio plays, Mysterious Journey, that includes episodes featuring Christie's "The Man in the Brown Suit."
In other radio-play news, the Greenbelt (MD) Arts Center will hold auditions via Zoom on June 30 and July 1 for a virtual production of the Christie radio play "The ABC Murders" (audition sign-ups close today).
Sisters in Crime is offering grants of $500 to those working on research projects that
contribute to understanding of the role of women or underrepresented
groups in crime fiction. The funds may be used to purchase books. The application deadline is July 15, 2021.
On June 8, mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Watch the video of the virtual festivities below; the Green portion begins approximately at 1 hour 2 seconds, with a presentation by my co-nominator Clare Meldrum on Green's life and work, followed by an appearance by Rebecca Crozier, Green's great-great granddaughter. Crozier tells an interesting anecdote about Green's reputed response to being barred from a courtroom.
Want to read works by Green?
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| Thelma Ritter, James Stewart, and Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954). |
The series has garnered Edgar nominations (Ellroy companion, Rankin companion), an Agatha nomination (Paretsky companion), and a Macavity Award (Paretsky companion).
In a new paper, Ross E. Davies (George Mason University School of Law) looks at connections between Sherlock Holmes and Supreme Court justices such as Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Charles Evans Hughes. (thanks to the Law & Humanities Blog)
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| Out of the Past (1947). |
"G Is for Grafton" (TV Santa Barbara, 2008). In a short clip, Grafton talks about how she started writing.
"Kinsey and Sue: An Interview with Sue Grafton" (Maryville Talks Books, Maryville University/Left Bank Books/St. Louis Public Radio/Higher Education Channel Television, 2014, coinciding with the release of Grafton's W Is for Wasted and Kinsey and Me). In addition to talking about these works, she discusses the three mysteries of her lawyer father, C. W. Grafton, and the travails of Hollywood.
The Jewel Theatre Company in Santa Cruz has been performing virtual radio plays. Some of the mystery-related ones:
"The Hitch-Hiker" by Lucille Fletcher (a man driving cross-country keeps seeing the same mysterious man)
The Whistler: Stranger in the House (a man comes home after six years, but is he who he says he is?)
The Mysterious Traveler: The Good Die Young by Robert Arthur and David Kogan (all is not well between a girl and her new stepmother)
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| Harry Houdini. NYPL. |
A new online offering from the University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press is the exhibition "Agatha Christie's Poirot" that draws from collections of materials on the iconic Belgian detective. It is presented in conjunction with the radio productions by the Resident Ensemble Players of Christie's "King of Clubs" (freely available until May 21) and "The Cornish Mystery" (freely available starting April 23).
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| Barbara Mertz, by Sue Feder |
Volume 39, no. 1 (2021) of Clues: A Journal of Detection—a theme issue on domestic noir guest edited by Eva Burke and Clare Clarke—has been published. The abstracts follow below. To order the issue or a subscription, contact McFarland.
Update, 5-10-21. This issue is now available on Kindle, Nook, and Google Play.
Introduction: Domestic Noir
EVA BURKE AND CLARE CLARKE (Trinity College Dublin)
The guest editors discuss the development of the domestic noir subgenre and the contents of this theme issue of Clues, including an interview with British author Julia Crouch, who coined the term domestic noir, and articles on Irish and Scandinavian domestic noir; women’s book groups; mid-century antecedents of domestic noir; and authors such as A. J. Finn (aka Dan Mallory), Gillian Flynn, Tana French, Paula Hawkins, and Evelyn Piper (aka Merriam Modell).
At Home in Irish Crime Fiction
BRIAN CLIFF (Trinity College Dublin)
The author discusses the connections among domestic noir, Irish crime fiction, and the wider Irish literature, including examples from works by Jane Casey, Sinéad Crowley, Tana French, Catherine Ryan Howard, and Liz Nugent.
“I Am Not the Girl I Used to Be”: Remembering the Femme Fatale in The Girl on the Train
ROSIE COUCH (Cardiff University)
This article situates Rachel from Paula Hawkins’s novel The Girl on the Train (2015) as a contemporary incarnation of the femme fatale, redeployed within the domestic noir subgenre. The analysis demonstrates how Rachel’s perspective works to enact a feminist backlash against postfeminist rhetoric.
The Girl Who Got Mad: Challenging Psychopathology in Domestic Noir’s Antiheroines
via Sarah Vaughan’s Anatomy of a Scandal (2018)
LIZ EVANS (University of Tasmania)
The author argues that Sarah Vaughan’s legal thriller Anatomy of a Scandal (2018) challenges domestic noir’s questionable tendency to pathologize anger and badness in its female protagonists (often depicted as survivors of rape or abuse) while showing how the persistent alignment of negative emotion with psychological instability undermines these central characters by impeding their self-agency.
Smoke and Mirrors: Dan Mallory, A. J. Finn, and The Woman in the Window as Postfeminist Noir Pastiche
ROBERTA GARRETT (University of East London)
The author discusses The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn (pseudonym of Dan Mallory), examining Finn’s treatment of female characters and the tropes of the noir and domestic noir subgenres through the lens of postfeminist criticism.
“He Had It Coming”: Reading the Revenge Plot in Domestic Noir’s Gone Girl (2012)
KATHARINA HENDRICKX (University of Sussex)
This article examines Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012) and its popularity with female readers. It suggests that female readers are not only interested in the portrayal of women’s experiences but also engage with the depiction of the revenge plot, which allows women readers to negotiate their frustration and anger with the current postfeminist climate.
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| Illustration of W. W. Jacobs. NYPL |
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| Susan Glaspell, NYPL |
Upcoming virtual performances of "Trifles":
• Ankeny Community Theatre (IA), March 28
• University at Buffalo–SUNY, April 9–11
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| Chester Himes in 1967. Fotocollectie Anefo, Dutch National Archives |
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| Whitefly, by Abdelilah Hamdouchi |
About the images. Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget. "The Boscombe Valley Mystery." The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (New York, 1892), p. 93. Ebenezer Scrooge by Arthur Rackham. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Philadelphia, 1843), frontispiece.
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| Georges Simenon, 10 May 1965. Anefo, Dutch Nat Archives |
This is volume 10 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series. It marks the second Edgar nomination for a book in the series (the first was for the James Ellroy companion by Jim Mancall).
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| S. J. Perelman, 1973, by Jill Krementz. NYPL. |
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| Dostoevsky |
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| Anthony Boucher, an author in the California Detective Fiction Collection |
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| Vincent Starrett |
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| Erle Stanley Gardner |
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| Rex Stout by Arnold Genthe, 1931. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Div. |
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| Gertrude Atherton, ca. 1906–12. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div. |
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| "Mary Rogers, The Cigar Girl." NYPL |
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| Lucille Fletcher, ca. 1948 |
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| Oscar Homolka and Sylvia Sidney in Hitchcock's Sabotage |
