Patricia Highsmith on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Encore.

Dean Stockwell in "Annabel"
Alfred Hitchcock Hour

A quadruple whammy in this week's episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour on Encore: "Annabel" is adapted from This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith, the screenplay is by Robert Bloch (Psycho), the star is Dean Stockwell, and the director is Paul Henreid. (It also can be viewed via YouTube.)

Ernest Bramah this week on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Ernest Bramah's blind detective and coin collector Max Carrados looks into forgery and murder in The Tales of Max Carrados (1914). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes usually may be heard for up to week after broadcast.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Judith Lee (1912–16), by Richard Marsh.

I did not propose to sit still [...and] allow those three uncanny beings, undisturbed, to work their evil wills.
—Richard Marsh, "Conscience" (1913)

"He had me by the throat before I had
even realized that danger
threatened." Illustration from
"Mandragora" by Richard Marsh
Washington Herald 1 Mar. 1914

Judith Lee is a "teacher of the deaf and dumb"—in other words, she can read lips. This skill tends to embroil her in trouble. In "The Man Who Cut Off My Hair," Lee encounters jewel thieves; the reader might be annoyed that Lee is enraged by her unwanted haircut rather than the robbery of an elderly man. In "Conscience," Lee connects cryptic utterances with two murders and takes action to avoid further deaths. In "Matched," Lee looks into the case of a bride who has vanished. In "Auld Lang Syne" she thwarts a bombing. In "The Miracle," Lee prevents a prospective marriage based on fraud. In "Isolda," Lee steps in to flout a fraudulent fortuneteller. In "Uncle Jack" she bests an American con man. In "The Restaurant Napolitain," Lee confronts agents of the Mafia. In "Mandragora," she works to free an innocent man from prison.

Lee does not always act wisely (as in "The Restaurant Napolitain" when she faces the bad guy—alone—and tells him she knows he has murdered someone). In some respects, she may resemble Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange (The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange, 1915).

Richard Marsh (aka Richard Bernard Heldmann, 1857–1915) is best known for The Beetle, which outsold Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897. His grandson was the horror writer Robert Aickman (1914–81). Few copies of Judith Lee: Some Pages from Her Life (1912) and The Adventures of Judith Lee (1916) exist in U.S. libraries, and the sole copy of The Adventures of Judith Lee on abebooks is priced at more than $1200. I am hoping that Valancourt Books, which has been reprinting Marsh's works, will eventually get to Judith Lee.

Via the Library of Congress' Chronicling America project I downloaded 10 of the Washington Herald versions of the Judith Lee stories that are collected in Judith Lee: Some Pages from Her Life (unfortunately, "Was It Luck or Chance?" was not entirely legible). As an aid to those who may wish to read these stories, I have uploaded the readable copies to my Web site; the links on the story titles in this blog post will take readers to them.

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

Canada Literary Tour: No mystery.

Grant Allen

I must confess to irritation that "Canada: A Literary Tour" on the Library and Archives Canada Web site has absolutely no mention of Canadian mystery contributions to its literary landscape. Not even Grant Allen (b. in Kingston, Ontario, in 1848)—grandson of the fifth Baron Longueuil (the only Canadian barony), friend of Arthur Conan Doyle, and creator of some of the earliest female fictional detectives (Lois Cayley, Hilda Wade). Surely multiaward-winning Louise Penny contributes substantially to a rendering of Quebec?

Brock University has a great Crime Fiction Canada resource. Perhaps the Crime Writers of Canada will compile their own mystery map of Canada.

"Crime Unseen" exhibition, Chicago.

Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Photography is staging the exhibition "Crime Unseen" until January 15, 2012, that features the camera's role in documenting crimes. There is some mention of the roles of detective fiction and movies.

John Buchan on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Richard Hannay
(Robert Donat) receives
an unpleasant surprise
in The 39 Steps
(dir Alfred Hitchcock,
1935)

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra the intrepid Richard Hannay grapples with German spies in The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for up to a week after broadcast.

Foxwell on Millay and mystery.

Millay, NYPL

Mystery Scene has recently posted my 2003 article on "'Me and Eddie Poe: Edna St. Vincent Millay's Foray into Mystery," which discusses Millay's "Murder in the Fishing Cat" and possible motivations in attempting to write mystery.

New light on the neglected.

An unexpected sidelight to the Authors Guild's lawsuit against HathiTrust is the attention it has garnered for authors and works that may have been neglected in recent years (although I was stunned that J. R. Salamanca's The Lost Country [1958] initially was included in HathiTrust's orphan works list. Prof. Salamanca was a major presence at University of Maryland––College Park when I was a student there and has just signed an ebook deal for one of his works).

James Gould Cozzens,
from the cover of the
Jan. 4, 1936, Saturday
Review of Literature

One work initially on HathiTrust's orphaned list (pulled when the heir of the estate, Harvard, was revealed) was Pulitzer Prize winner James Gould Cozzens's first novel, Confusion (1924), which he published at age 21 and is deemed by Daniel S. Burt in The Chronology of American Literature (2004) to be "pretentiously overwritten" (371). Cozzens himself ended up not thinking much of the novel, which focuses on the search by a young Frenchwoman to realize her ambitions.

Cozzens is on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list for his fine novel The Just and the Unjust (1942; about the effects of a murder on a small town, especially its implications for the ambitious assistant DA. A 1942 issue of Esquire chose The Just and the Unjust as a good Christmas present for an "average reader," along with Maugham's The Hour before the Dawn).

Cozzens also wrote "Foot in It" (Redbook 1935; repr. as "Clerical Error," EQMM June 1950 and Muller & Pronzini, eds., Chapter & Hearse; adapted for Tales of the Unexpected, 1983). Raymond Chandler thought highly of Cozzens's Guard of Honor (1948). Gordon Van Ness has written an interesting essay about Cozzens's work in honor of Cozzens biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli, including Cozzens's criticism of Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, and Capote as well as his own work: "To learn to write and to write decently is simply a much longer and harder thing than is generally admitted" (203).

I also found that full text of Leslie Ford's The Girl from the Mimosa Club (1957, selected by Mystery Loves Company bookstore as one of the best mysteries of the 20th century) is in the HathiTrust library. After consulting with author Marcia Talley (who knows a lot about Ford's oeuvre and personal background), checking copyright records, and reviewing copyright law, I think it probably did go out of copyright.

Exhibition: SF in crime fiction.

The exhibition "Bullets across the Bay: The San Francisco Bay Area in Crime Fiction" at UC Berkeley's Doe Library is on display until February 29, 2012, including authors such as Anthony Boucher, Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, and Julie Smith. Article about the exhibition here.

Product of the Day: Edgar Allan Pooh mousepad.

By Bizarro artist Dan Piraro: The Edgar Allan Pooh mousepad (other products with this artwork also available).

Foxwell on mystery categories.

David Goodis's noir novel
Shoot the Piano Player
(1956), mentioned in
my WIRB piece

In "What's in a Name? Mystery Subgenres Explained" over at the new online publication the Washington Independent Review of Books, I attempt to briefly explain the various mystery categories (e.g., cozy, noir, thriller), listing classic and contemporary examples of each.

Golden Duck reprints Allingham's Oaken Heart.

Golden Duck, which had previously published Julia Jones's biography The Adventures of Margery Allingham, has reprinted Margery Allingham's splendid nonfiction work on life in a World War II English village, The Oaken Heart (1941). Read the Telegraph review of the reissue here.  Jones wrote an article for Clues 23.1 (2004) on Allingham's book reviews in Lady Rhondda's feminist journal Time & Tide.

John le Carre on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Alec Guinness in
Smiley's People (1982)

George Smiley fans, rejoice: This week, BBC Radio 4 Extra features The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. Go here for the schedule; episodes can usually be heard online for up to a week after broadcast.

A. E. W. Mason's The Prisoner in the Opal (1928).

The blog Redeeming Qualities discusses
A. E. W. Mason's The Prisoner in the Opal (1928), "a delightfully silly mystery." Mason is best known for The Four Feathers (1902) and Fire over England (1936), but he also wrote mysteries such as At the Villa Rose (1910) featuring Inspector Hanaud.

Literary treasures of the Bodleian.

Among the Treasures of the Bodleian exhibition, which can be viewed online:

• Mary Shelley's draft of Frankenstein (excerpt read here)

• The first ten Penguin books issued in 1935, including Oxford graduate Dorothy L. Sayers's The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Sharp-eyed viewers also will spot Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but according to Jeremy Lewis's Penguin Special (2005), Penguin eventually pulled this over contractual issues.

Dustjacket from Tolkien's
The Hobbit (1937). NYPL

• Telegram received by the Cedric from the Titanic: "Require assistance . . . Struck iceberg."

• Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons (1804–07). More about the novel here.

• J. R. R. Tolkien's watercolor of the dragon Smaug for The Hobbit

Ian Rankin, John Thaw on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Clues'
Scottish crime fiction issue

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Rebus uncovers more than simple theft in Ian Rankin's short story collection Beggars Banquet. Mystery fans also may be interested in Sheila Hancock's recollections of her late husband, Morse's John Thaw. Episodes generally can be heard online for up to a week after broadcast.

Happy birthday, H. F. Heard.

The Deadly Bees (1967),
adapt. of H. F. Heard's
A Taste for Honey
(screenwriter Robert Bloch)

Philosopher, writer, and spirituality seeker Henry FitzGerald Heard, known in mysterydom as H. F. Heard, was born today in London in 1889. He published three books with beekeeper-sleuth Mr. Mycroft: the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work A Taste for Honey (1941), Reply Paid (1942), and The Notched Hairpin (1949), and one short story, "Mr. Montalba, Obsequist" (repr. The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Sebastian Wolfe, 1989). He also published Murder by Reflection (1942). Wildside Press has reissued his The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales (1944).

The Bunburyist hits 50K.

The Bunburyist has clocked its 50,000th pageview—probably modest in comparison to some other blogs, but considering I started this blog as an experiment with no clue that it would be of interest to anyone, I'm gratified that people seem to like it. Thanks for the support.

Clues 29.2: Simenon, Stout, Sayers, et al.

Vol 29, no. 2 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has just been published, including the following topics:

• Analyses of two matchups of the detective vs. archcriminal. The first one is Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Arnold Zeck; John Littlejohn looks at Stout's reasons for creating a major adversary for Wolfe. The second is the Sara Martin Allegre's examination of the complex relationship between Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus and his nemesis, "Big Ger" Cafferty.

• Detection Club president Simon Brett pays tribute to his late colleague H. R. F. Keating:  "Whenever I think of Harry, I think of the Olympic Diving competition."

• Dorothy L. Sayers's engagement with true crime between the wars by Victoria Stewart.

• Ahmet Mithat Efendi's Esrar-i Cinayat, the first Turkish detective novel (1884), by Zeynep Tufekcioglu

• The role of class in the 1930s Maigret novels of Georges Simenon by Bill Alder.

• The use of sound in the works of Raymond Chandler by Eric Rawson and the role of the automobile in the works of Chandler and James M. Cain by Shelby Smoak.

• Gender bending in Mickey Spillane's Vengeance Is Mine! (1950) by Heather Duerre Humann.

• The Montana-set police procedurals of Robert Sims Reid by Rachel Schaffer.

• Margaret Atwood's techniques that lead the reader to become a detective by Lisa A. Wellinghoff.

Margery Allingham on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra the amnesiac Albert Campion struggles to uncover his own identity in Traitor's Purse (one of the favorite mysteries of 1941). Go here for the schedule; episodes can usually be heard online for up to a week after broadcast.