"The Girl Sleuth" exhibition at Syracuse U.

Ending soon at Syracuse University's Bird Library is the exhibition "The Girl Sleuth," with books including such sleuths as Nancy Drew and Peggy Parker. See further details in Syracuse's The Daily Orange.

"Died in the Wool" (1978).

George Baker in "Died in the Wool" (1978)

In Died in the Wool (1978), Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn (George Baker) looks into the murder of an MP, whose body is found in a bale of wool.

Newly released: Soundtrack to Hammett.

Just released by Silva Screen Records is John Barry's soundtrack to Hammett (dir. Wim Wenders, 1982), a film based on the book by Joe Gores; one screenwriter on the film was Ross Thomas. It stars the recently departed Frederic Forrest as Dashiell Hammett, who draws on his Pinkerton experience to assist a mentor with a new case. To hear some samples from the soundtrack, go here.

Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900).

In Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900)—believed to be the earliest film featuring The Great Detective—Holmes encounters a burglar in his rooms. Unfortunately, the names of the actors are unknown.

The non-Hammett story?

Over on the blog Black Gate, Will Murray discusses "The Diamond Wager" (1929)—a Detective Fiction Weekly short story about a gentleman thief long thought to be written by Dashiell Hammett, but Murray makes a strong case for the WWI Navy veteran, journalist, and WWII OSS agent Samuel Lungren Dashiell (1891–1949) as the author.

Dashiell Hammett
Yank 30 Nov. 1945

Journalist Samuel Lungren Dashiell,
from his 1919 passport application.

Conan Doyle's "How Watson Learned the Trick."

Arthur Conan Doyle. NYPL

In the Baker Street Almanac, George Mason University law professor and Green Bag editor Ross E. Davies discusses "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1922), a short, humorous dialogue between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in which the good doctor proudly shows off what he has learned of Holmes' methods. It was written by Arthur Conan Doyle as part of a project for Queen Mary. This publication also reproduces the text of the dialogue. (a thanks to the Law & Humanities blog)

Georges Simenon, photographer.

Georges Simenon, 1966.
Anefo, Dutch National Archives

Running through 27 August 2023 at Liège's Grand Curtius Museum, the exhibition "Simenon: Images of a World in Crisis" features photographs taken by Georges Simenon on his extensive travels in the 1930s. See a press kit for the exhibition (in French).

Next McFarland Companion to Mystery Fiction: James Sallis.

Volume 13 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit is on James Sallis (author of Drive, creator of detective Lew Griffin, biographer of Chester Himes, critic, poet, and cross-genre writer). The author is University of East Anglia's Nathan Ashman. The book is expected to be issued in fall 2023.

Featured in One Book One Nebraska: Mignon G. Eberhart.

Bison Books edition of
Eberhart's The Mystery of
Hunting's End

The 2023 selection for One Book One Nebraska (a community-based reading program focusing on a classic work by a Nebraska writer or one that has a Nebraska setting) is a mystery: The Mystery of Hunting's End (1930) by Nebraska-born Grand Master Mignon G. Eberhart (1899–1996). Nurse Sarah Keate is engaged to care for Lucy Kingery at a lodge full of guests cut off from the outside world by a snowstorm. Wrote Freddy the Detective's Walter R. Brooks in the 19 Nov. 1930 The Outlook (469), "Gruesome and ghastly are the goings on in a snowbound hunting lodge .... Gooseflesh connoisseurs will enjoy this one."

Discussion questions and other resources are offered such as an introductory video by Nebraska Wesleyan University's Rick Cypert, author of America's Agatha Christie: Mignon Good Eberhart, and a link to Mystery House (1938), a film based on the novel.

• Interested in buying the book? Go here.
  
• Want to suggest a book for the One Book One Nebraska program? Go here.

A new Jury Box columnist for EQMM.

I debut in the July/Aug 2023 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine as The Jury Box columnist (I am the first woman to write the column--I think I'll be writing one column per year). As someone who grew up reading Jon L. Breen's Jury Box reviews, it's a dream come true. I review classic reprints or short story collections by Anthony Berkeley [Cox], Eleanor A. Blake, J. Harvey Bond [Russell Robert Winterbotham], Mary Fitt [Kathleen Freeman], Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, E. C. R. Lorac [Edith Caroline Rivett], Ellery Queen & Josh Pachter, Jack Ritchie [John George Reitci], and Susan Scarlett [Noel Streatfeild].

Upcoming Grolier Club exhibition: "Key Books in Detective Fiction."

Feminist Press ed.
of The G-String Murders

New York's Grolier Club will open the exhibition "Whodunit? Key Books in Detective Fiction" in November 2023, which will feature significant and unusual mystery works from the collection of Grolier Club member Jeffrey Johnson. Items will include The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens,  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, and The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee (often thought to be ghosted by Craig Rice).

A glimpse of Anna Katharine Green.

Anna Katharine Green, n.d. NYPL.

On her website, writer Patricia Meredith provides a 21 July 1889 Daily Inter Ocean article by Mary Hatch, "An American Gaboriau," that provides an interesting personal look at pioneering American mystery author Anna Katharine Green (The Leavenworth Case, etc.). Hatch, a cousin of Green's sister-in-law, had a warm friendship with Green, and as Green was not fond of being interviewed, Hatch's insights are valuable. Hatch calls Green "a tall, graceful girl" who "learned the art of expressing herself with grace, accuracy, and poetic finish."

Clues 41.1: Detective fiction and borders.

Clues 41.1 (2023)—a theme issue on Detective Fiction and Borders—has been published. For a print issue or a subscription, contact McFarland.

Update, 10-21-23. The ebook versions are now available:
Kindle. Nook.

Introduction: Detective Fiction and Borders
MANINA JONES (Western University, Canada)

The guest editor of this theme issue of Clues provides an overview of the issue, including essays on Saradindu Bandyopadhyay, Carlos Bulosan, Agatha Christie, Calling All Cars, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, Japanese crime fiction, Ausma Zehanat Khan, Henning Mankell, China Miéville, Miguel Pajares, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden. 

Crimes at the Maritime Border: Miguel Pajares’s Aguas de venganza [Waters of Revenge]
SILVIA RUZZI

This essay analyzes Miguel Pajares’s Aguas de venganza [Waters of Revenge, 2016], delving into the representations of the Mediterranean Sea as a constructed lawless maritime border where crimes are unpunished; revenge occurs; and official explanations of border casualties interact with a narrative of border crimes, public negligence, and injustice. 

Policing Mobilities and Boundaries: A Study of Henning Mankell’s The Dogs of Riga and Firewall
ARATRIKA MANDAL and SOMDATTA BHATTACHARYA (Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur)

This article examines the representation of racism and immigration and the ways they transform borderline and bordered space into criminal space in two popular Swedish crime novels by Henning Mankell. In Mankell’s Firewall and Dogs of Riga, negotiations between individuals and borders realize the interaction between state apparatuses and technology, potentially destabilizing the physical and the virtual border. 

The Geopolitics of Passing in Carlos Bulosan’s All the Conspirators
SYDNEY VAN TO (UC Berkeley) 

Carlos Bulosan’s mid–twentieth-century noir novella All the Conspirators stages a conflict between guerrillas and collaborators in the postwar Philippines, illustrating a “geopolitics of passing” that examines the triangulation of borders through acts of racial, ideological, and imperial passing. Through the trope of passing, the transgression and eventual reconstitution of these borders is shown to be an alibi for the expansion of U.S. empire. 

Embodied Borders: Countering Islamophobia in Ausma Zehanat Khan’s Crime Fiction
PILAR CUDER-DOMÍNGUEZ (University of Huelva, Spain) 

This essay draws from critical race and affect studies in addressing how the police officer Esa Khattak in Ausma Zehanat Khan’s crime fiction embodies race and faith differences within the Global North and thus helps bring attention to bear on the rise of anti-Muslim feelings within allegedly plural liberal democracies.

A new blue plaque for Wilkie Collins.

Wilkie Collins. NYPL.

The Isle of Thanet News reports that Church Hill Cottage (aka Woodside Cottage) in Broadstairs, UK, has received a new blue plaque (a historical recognition program for UK structures), as it was the location where Wilkie Collins wrote the early chapters of his landmark mystery The Woman in White (1859–60). Journalist Ken Nickoll followed clues in censuses, land documents, and Collins's correspondence to uncover Collins's lodging.

"Directed by Ida Lupino: Macabre Television."

Ida Lupino.

On June 24 at the Billy Wilder Theater, UCLA Film & Television Archive will salute some of Ida Lupino's directing contributions to TV mystery and horror through the program "Directed by Ida Lupino: Macabre Television," showing the episodes "A Crime for Mothers" (Alfred Hitchcock Presents),  "Guillotine" (Thriller; screenplay by Charles Beaumont, based on a story by Cornell Woolrich), and "The Masks" (Twilight Zone).

Beijing hosts Sherlock Holmes exhibition.

Sherlock Holmes by
Sidney Paget

China Daily brings word that the National Museum of Classic Books in Beijing is hosting an exhibition on Sherlock Holmes until November 2, including crime scenes from the Holmes canon and a late-19th-century Chinese newspaper that printed Holmes tales translated into Chinese.

Orson Welles and The Black Museum.

Illustration of Orson Welles 
to advertise The Lives of
Harry Lime, ca. 1951

Over on Wellesnet, Ray Kelly discusses Orson Welles' role in The Black Museum, an early true-crime radio program based on Scotland Yard cases, and The Adventures of Harry Lime (US title: The Lives of Harry Lime), a radio program based on Welles's shady character in the film The Third Man. 

Listen to Black Museum episodes here.
Listen to The Lives of Harry Lime episodes here.

Hardboiled programs, DeKalb (IL) Public Library.

From May through August, DeKalb (IL) Public Library is hosting the free monthly program "The Golden Age of Film Noir and Its Novels," discussing key novels and showing clips from their film adaptations. Authors featured include Dashiell Hammett (May 27), James M. Cain, W. R. Burnett, and Cornell Woolrich.

Photos: (left) James M. Cain; (right) Dashiell Hammett, Yank, 30 Nov. 1945; (bottom, top) illustration of W. R. Burnett by his first wife, Marjorie Burnett, 1932; Cornell Woolrich.

Columbo exhibition.

Columbo exhibition artwork by
Jam Bookshop owner and illustrator
David Ziggy Green

Jam Bookshop in Hackney, London, plans the upcoming exhibition "Just One More Thing," which will be composed of artworks from the public that salute Richard Levinson and William Link's rumpled yet shrewd detective. The exhibition will run May 4–21, 2023. More here (including some sample drawings).

Anne Perry, 1938–2023.

Anne Perry, left, and Elizabeth Foxwell.
Photo by Dean James.

Last week I learned that Anne Perry, author of numerous mysteries and other books, had passed away at age 84. Many of the obituary treatments, in my view, failed to provide a true depiction of Anne's life and work (including one that referred to Anne as "matronly." Anne took care of herself and delighted in clothes; she was always a stylish figure, and I speak as one who once acted as her personal shopper). Although trying to accurately capture a multifaceted career in a brief space is always daunting, I attempt this below.

Anne and I were friends for some 30 years, stemming from early Malice Domestic conventions (she introduced the Malice Domestic 6 anthology and contributed to Murder, They Wrote II, both of which I coedited). I was a devoted fan of her Victorian mysteries with Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, as well as her other Victorian series with eventual private inquiry agent/river police officer William Monk and nurse Hester Latterly (I presented a paper on Hester at a Popular Culture Assn conference that was eventually published in Clues 22.2, 2001). We also shared an interest in World War I (she wrote five mysteries set during the war—one character, Joseph Reavley, was based on her grandfather, who had been a military chaplain during the war). Always up for new challenges, she also penned two fantasy novels, Tathea and Come Armegeddon; the novel The Sheen on the Silk set in 13th-century Constantinople; a series with photographer and spy Elena Standish; a series with the Pitts' son Daniel; and annual mysteries set around Christmas. In recent years, she was living in Los Angeles, because she was learning about screenwriting and was interested in seeing more of her works on screen after The Cater Street Hangman, the first in the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series, was adapted and shown in the UK and on A&E in the US in 1998. It starred Eoin McCarthy, Keeley Hawes, and John Castle. Anne appears in a cameo role—look for her in a scene set outside of a church. She told me that donning the various layers of Victorian garments was an educational experience. Although Anne hoped that this production would lead to further adaptations of other novels in the Pitt series, this did not occur. Over the years, there were nibbles about adaptations of the Monk series—Anne was especially excited about the prospect of Gabriel Byrne playing Monk, and she thought the actor Jonathan Hyde would make a fine Monk—but these did not pan out.

 

Anne, right, in The Cater Street Hangman.

Chandler's CA locations.

The Security Pacific Bank Bldg, which
housed Marlowe's office as the
"Cahuenga Bldg." Wikimedia Commons.

Michele E. Buttelman in Santa Clarita Valley [CA]'s The Signal discusses "California Literary Locations," which include the office site of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Musso & Frank Grill (mentioned in The Long Goodbye), and the Greystone Mansion (possibly the model for General Sternwood's estate in The Big Sleep).

The illustrated Continental Op.

Clover Press has published a new illustrated edition featuring Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, which includes the stories "Arson Plus" (Oct. 1923), "Crooked Souls" (Oct. 1923), "Slippery Fingers" (Oct. 1923), "It" (Nov. 1923), and "Bodies Piled Up" (Dec. 1923). The artist is John K. Snyder III. View some sample illustrations here.

Edwards receives 2023 Dove Award.

The latest recipient of the George N. Dove Award of the Popular Culture Assn's Detective/Mystery Caucus is British novelist and Detection Club president Martin Edwards (Edgar nominee, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators). The award is presented for contributions to the serious study of mystery and crime fiction. Past recipients include Frankie Y. Bailey, Douglas G. Greene, Christine Jackson, P. D. James, H. R. F. Keating, Margaret Kinsman, Maureen Reddy, John M. Reilly, Janet Rudolph, J. K. Van Dover, and yours truly.

Creating a detective story through art.

Here's an interesting project: artist Daniel Moore is creating a detective story through the use of public domain images such as 1920s movie stills.

New mystery audiobooks from Librivox.

Librivox, which marshals volunteer readers to produce free audiobooks of works in the public domain, has some new mystery-related offerings:

• A Modern Mephistopheles by Louisa May Alcott
  (an Alcott "blood and thunder" tale)
• The Tower Treasure by Frankin W. Dixon (the Hardy Boys debut)
  
• The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (man with an aristocratic title claim is murdered)
  
• The Unholy Three by Tod Robbins (carnival performers become criminals)
  
• Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter's brother is accused of murder)
  
• Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter looks into a potential murder)
  
• The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace (cop and prosecutor chase a dastardly secret society)

Want to volunteer as a reader? Visit this webpage. 

Grants for academic research, Sisters in Crime.

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. US citizens or legal residents as well as those conducting research on US authors are eligible to apply. The application deadline is April 15, 2023. 

Interested in projects of previous recipients? Go here.

Online TCU exhibition on dime novels.

Texas Christian University's Mary Couts Burnett Library has the online exhibition "A Riotous Imagination; or, Dime Novels in America," which looks at the inexpensive and often lurid tales of adventure, mystery, horror, and romance that emerged in the nineteenth century. Sections of the exhibition include "Cowboys and Detectives," "Investigating Crime," and "Rise of the Pulps."

The agonies of the agony column.

The Ciphers of The Times project at McGill University (headed by Nathalie Cooke) explores the Victorian agony column in the Times of London that often involved messages from criminals and detectives, including ways that messages in this column were encoded. The project includes an online interactive game where a person can play detective by following clues in a sample column. There also are discussion and data regarding "newspaper novels" (those that involve newspapers in their plots) such as The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester (aka James Redding Ware) and Lady Audley's Secret (1862) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. An additional resource is the accompanying exhibition "News and Novel Sensations."

Ruh-roh: Scooby-Doo exhibition.

Running through April 9, 2023, is "Scooby-Doo Mansion Mayhem" exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, in Dearborn, Michigan, where visitors can solve mysteries alongside Scooby, Shaggy, and gang.

Clues CFP: BIPOC female detectives.

Seeking to illuminate an often marginalized space, this Clues theme issue will focus on female detectives who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color); span eras, genres, and geographical locations; and appear in texts, TV programs, films, and other media. Of particular interest are intersections among race, indigeneity, gender, age, class, or sexuality in these works, as well as projects that center BIPOC authorship and scholarship. 

Some Suggested Topics:  

• BIPOC female detective figures in African and Asian crime fiction, such as in works by Leye Adenle, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Angela Makholwa, and Jane De Suza. 
• BIPOC female detectives in hard-boiled and traditional mysteries that might include characters such as Carolina Garcia-Aguilera’s Lupe Solano, Eleanor Taylor Bland’s Marti MacAlister, Leslie Glass’s April Woo, Sujata Massey’s Rei Shimura and Perveen Mistry, Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, BarbaraNeely’s Blanche White, S. J. Rozan’s Lydia Chin, Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle and Odessa Jones, and Paula L. Woods’s Charlotte Justice. 
• BIPOC female detectives in film and television series such as Get Christie Love! (1974–75, TV movie 2018), Angie Tribeca (2016), and Black Earth Rising (2018). 
• BIPOC female detectives in comics/graphic novels such as Storm and Misty Knight of Marvel Comics, Martha Washington of Dark Horse Comics, and Vixen of DC Comics. 
• BIPOC female sidekicks such as Janet Evanovich’s Lula, Elementary’s Joan H. Watson, or BIPOC detecting teams such as those in Cheryl Head’s Charlie Mack series or Ausmat Zehanat Khan’s Inaya Rahman series. 
• BIPOC female detectives of male authors such as Kwei Quartey, Deon Meyer, and Alexander McCall Smith. 
• Analyses of historical BIPOC female detectives in crime fiction such as in Fergus Hume’s Hagar of the Pawnshop (1898) and Pauline E. Hopkins’s Hagar’s Daughter (1901). 
• Analyses that queer the BIPOC female detective, or examine the intersections between gender and sexuality in these works. 
• Relationships between BIPOC female detectives and criminals/criminality. 

Submissions should include a proposal of approximately 250 words and a brief biosketch. Proposals due: May 30, 2023. Submit proposals to: Prof. Sam Naidu, email: s.naidu <at> ru.ac.za. Full manuscripts of approximately 6,000 words based on an accepted proposal will be due by September 30, 2023.

Henry Mancini and Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.

As Scott Bettencourt discusses in Film Score Monthly, Quartet Records has issued on CD the score to Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), which includes the version by Ron Goodwin and the version by Henry Mancini that was rejected by Hitchcock. Visit Quartet Records to listen to some clips from both scores.

Shirley Jackson panel.

If you missed the online symposium Reading Shirley Jackson in the 21st Century, you can now watch the panel with Jackson's sons and grandchildren as well as Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy.

Sherlock Holmes items from Guymon collection at California Antiquarian Book Fair.

Ned Guymon with his
first wife, Ernestine, in 1923.

There will be an exhibition featuring Sherlock Holmes materials from Occidental College's Ned Guymon Collection of Mystery and Detective Fiction during the 55th California International Antiquarian Book Fair on February 10–12, 2023, in Pasadena. The collection is composed of some 16,000 items; one item is an 1887 copy of A Study in Scarlet (also includes Guymon's bookplate).

 There also is a Guymon collection at Bowling Green State University.

Upcoming classic thrillers, Library of America.

On January 3, the Library of America announced some of its fall 2023 releases, which included the following:

(1) Five Classic Thrillers 1961–1964 (The Murderers by Fredric Brown, The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, Dead Calm by Charles Williams, The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, The Score by Richard Stark [Donald Westlake])

(2) Four Classic Thrillers 1964–1969 (The Fiend by Margaret Millar, Doll by Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], Run Man Run by Chester Himes, The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith)

Below are some critics' reactions to the works in these volumes.

Re Brown's The Murderers: Sgt. Cuff [John Winterich] in 30 Sept. 1961 Saturday Review dubbed it "highly amative."

Re Highsmith's Tremor of Forgery: Terrence Rafferty in the 4 Jan. 1988 New Yorker dubbed the book "nihilistic."

Re Himes's Run Man Run: Sgt. Cuff in the 31 Dec. 1966 Saturday Review regarded this as a "[t]aut, devilish, ably-written slice of life—and death."

Re Hughes's Expendable Man (Edgar nominee, Best Novel): Kirkus lauded its "savage momentum."

Re Marlowe's The Name of the Game Is Death: Anthony Boucher in the 11 Feb 1962 New York Times believed that Marlowe had reached "an impressive new high."

The latest from John Straley.

Radio station KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, caught up with author John Straley (long based in Sitka, but he has moved to California), discussing topics such as the role of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton (probably best known for The Seven Storey Mountain) in Blown by the Same Wind, Straley's new mystery set in the fictional town of Cold Storage, Alaska.

Shirley Jackson, department store clerk.

The New England Historical Society writes about Shirley Jackson's short stint as a worker at Macy's (which includes a link to Jackson's short story "My Life with R.H. Macy").

Foxwell ebooks sale.

Get 25% off my two ebooks until January 1 with the sale at Smashwords. No Man's Land & Other Stories collects my mostly historical mystery stories (including two award winners); In Their Own Words offers first-person accounts by US women who served in World War I. 

Second Oddest Book Title Award for McFarland.

For the second year in a row, McFarland has nabbed the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title administered by The Bookseller with RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning with RuPaul’s Drag Race, edited by Lindsay Bryde and Tommy Mayberry. Last year's winner was Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero by Roy Schwartz.

Lady Audley in the dock.

As the Law and Humanities blog mentions, Robert E. Rains (Penn State Dickinson Law) discusses in a new article the many crimes of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley of Lady Audley's Secret (1862) from a legal perspective. The charges that he believes "a crusading prosecutor might have leveled against Lady A" include arson, attempted murder, bigamy, and manslaughter, and he criticizes the "rather slow" and "lazy" barrister Sir Robert Audley.

A Bunburyist milestone.

1,000,000

A milestone sneaked up on me: The Bunburyist has passed its 1 millionth view. When I began this blog in November 2005, I really had no idea if anyone would be interested in my posts (visitors probably have noticed that I am particularly fond of archival mystery goodies and exhibitions on mysteries, as I think these can tend to be overlooked and are valuable resources). In recent years, I've had to cut back on blogging because of work and writing commitments and the addition of my blog on US women in World War I—even wondering at times if I should end this blog. So, if you've ever stopped by, thanks. 

Here are the top-10 posts with the most views:

Eugène François Vidocq,
from Memoires de Vidocq,
Chef de la Police de Sureté
Jusqu'en 1827. Paris, 1828–29.

10. The First 100 Years of Detective Fiction.  "...[T"he Lilly Library of Indiana University's online version of its 1973 exhibition 'The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction, 1841–1941' ... provides a useful history of the genre through the works selected"

9. Remembering Adam West: The Detectives. Although Adam West probably is best known as the titular character in the TV series Batman, he previously played Detective Sergeant Steve Nelson in the TV series The Detectives.

8. Shoot to Kill (film noir, 1947). A murder involves a gangster, a DA, a DA's wife/secretary, and a reporter.

7. "Iniquity is catching": Frank R. Stockton's The Stories of the Three Burglars (1889). Burglars bargain with a wronged homeowner in this work by the author of "The Lady, or the Tiger?"

6. "Security Risk" (GE True, 1963). A tale of espionage narrated by Jack Webb, directed by William Conrad, and starring Charles Aickman.

5. "Iconic detectives" exhibition at Ohio State. Library exhibition that featured "detectives from dime novels, young adult books, comic books, films, and manga."

4.  Hidden Fear (film, 1957). US cop John Payne works in Denmark to clear his sister of a murder charge.

3. "The Grave Grass Quivers," by MacKinlay Kantor. The poignant 1931 story by a Pulitzer Prize winner of a doctor who seeks to learn the fate of his long-missing father and brother. 

2. "Committed" (with Alan Ladd, 1954). In this episode of GE Theater, a writer is framed for murder and confined to an asylum.

1. The dozen best detective short stories ever written. Selected by author-critics such as Anthony Boucher, John Dickson Carr, August Derleth, Howard Haycraft, Ellery Queen, James Sandoe, and Vincent Starrett.

McFarland's 40% off sale.

McFarland is having a 40% off sale on all its titles until Nov 28 with coupon code HOLIDAY22. It's a good time to stock up on the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction that I edit; check out the full companion lineup.

A friend of Sherlock Holmes.

Irving Bacheller, from his
1917 passport application

In a blog post, Greenwich [CT] Historical Society curator Christopher Shields discusses the important role of journalist and novelist Irving Bacheller (1859–1950) in introducing Sherlock Holmes and other fictional figures to US readers.

New: The Crime World of Michael Connelly.

New from McFarland is David Geherin's The Crime World of Michael Connelly, which provides insight into characters such as Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller (aka the Lincoln Lawyer), media adaptations of Connelly's work, Connelly's technique, and Connelly's portrayals of LA and its police. I enjoyed looking at the final proofs of this book.

McFarland nabs 3 nominees for Oddest Book Title.

After last year's triumph with Is Superman Circumcised?, McFarland now has three nominees for this year's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title:

• 
  Jane Austen and the Buddha: Teachers of Enlightenment by Kathryn Duncan (I looked at the final proofs of this book, which is an interesting discussion of Buddhist concepts that appear in Austen's work).
  
  
• The Many Lives of Scary Clowns: Essays on Pennywise, Twisty, the Joker, Krusty and More. ed. Ron Riekki (for those who love clowns in the horror genre).
  
  
• RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning with RuPaul’s Drag Race, ed. Lindsay Bryde and Tommy Mayberry

The other nominees are Frankenstein Was a Vegetarian: Essays on Food Choice, Identity, and Symbolism by Michael Owen Jones (UP of Mississippi); Smuggling Jesus Back into the Church by Andrew Fellows (IVP); and What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada by Mary-Ann Shantz (U of British Columbia P).

Members of the public may cast their vote for the award (the deadline is November 26).

Update, December 10, 2022. The winning book is McFarland's RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning with RuPaul’s Drag Race, ed. Lindsay Bryde and Tommy Mayberry

"Sherlock Holmes: The Exhibition" in Minnesota.

On view at the Minnesota History Center until April 2, 2023 is the interactive "Sherlock Holmes: The Exhibition," which encompasses forensic science elements that assisted Holmes in solving crimes, the Victorian milieu, and objects from the University of Minnesota's extensive Sherlock Holmes Collections. In connection with the exhibition is the Minnesota Mystery Flash Fiction Contest (submission deadline December 15, 2022).

"Kentish Tales" exhibition.

J.  S. Fletcher

On view until the end of the month at the Augustine House library at Canterbury Christ Church University (UK) is the exhibition "Kentish Tales: Stories of Love, Smuggling, and Murder" that focuses on authors who lived in or wrote about Kent. A mystery-related title in the exhibition is The Passenger to Folkestone (1927) by J. S. Fletcher, in which a murder appears to result from robbery but eventually reveals other facets (the online info on the exhibition includes an audio excerpt from the book). Also included is the comedy The Green Alleys by Eden Phillpotts, who was Agatha Christie's mentor. The exhibition is curated by the digital humanities project Kent Maps Online.