WQXR Movies on the Radio: 1940s films.

Miklos Rozsa conducts his suite
 from Ben Hur, 1979 (PBS)

The March 29 episode of WQXR's Movies on the Radio features scores from the 1940s, which includes music from Double Indemnity (composed by Miklos Rozsa), The Maltese Falcon (composed by Adolph Deutsch), and Spellbound (composed by Bernard Herrmann).

Behind a new Hammett collection.

On Cultural Compass of UT-Austin's Harry Ransom Center, Julie M. Rivett (granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett) describes her work in the center archives with Richard Layman to prepare the raw material for The Hunter and Other Stories—a new collection of Hammett short stories that includes previously unpublished works.

Heinlein on decency.

In an August 1952 episode of the Edward R. Murrow program This I Believe, sci-fi author Robert Heinlein spoke about his faith in the goodness of his neighbors and others. Said Heinlein, "Our headlines are splashed with crime. Yet for every criminal, there are ten thousand honest, decent, kindly men. . . . Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime."

Number, please: Return of an Australian debut.

Murder in the Telephone Exchange (1948) by Australian mystery writer June Wright (1919–2012) features a sleuthing telephone operator pursuing the murderer of a nosy colleague (Kirkus review here). It is slated to be reissued by Portland publisher Verse Chorus in April (in Australia) and June (other countries). This will be followed later in the year by a previously unpublished Wright mystery, Duck Season Death. Verse Chorus plans other Wright reissues.

Twenty-year anniversary of The Alienist.

Bellevue Hospital, 1878. NYPL

The Bowery Boys podcast remembers that Caleb Carr's The Alienist was released 20 years ago and provides additional details on and a map of significant New York locations in the book (such as Bellevue Hospital and Theodore Roosevelt's house).

The Happy Thieves (1961).

Today would have been the 99th birthday of Richard Condon, who was born in 1915 and died in 1996. He is probably best known for the chilling The Manchurian Candidate (1959) and Prizzi's Honor (1982). His debut novel was The Oldest Confession (1958), which became the film The Happy Thieves. Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth star as a pair of art thieves plying their trade in Madrid; apparently Hayworth thought little of the film.

Mysteries in March on CBC Radio (Canada).

The CBC Radio program The Next Chapter is focusing on mysteries this month, including quizzes and recommended reading lists (the latter featuring writers such as Gail Bowen).

Nazis in crime fiction.

Edmund Crispin's Holy Disorders
(1945), one entry in the
Detecting the Past database

Katharina Hall of Swansea University has an ongoing project, Detecting the Past, that seeks to examine how crime writers have portrayed the Nazis and their impact on the postwar period. The project also will include TV and film representations. A sample of the database that Hall is compiling on the subject can be viewed here.

The Lady Confesses (1945).

In The Lady Confesses (1945), Hugh Beaumont's inconvenient wife returns just as he plans to marry another woman and winds up dead.

Now online: My article on first American detective novelist.

Illustration from
Metta Fuller Victor's
The Dead Letter (1864)

Mystery Scene has posted my article from issue no. 81 (2003) on author-editor Metta Fuller Victor, who wrote The Dead Letter (the first American detective novel).

The intrigue behind Holmes's missing years.

Patrick Allen as Col. Sebastian
Moran in "The Empty House"
(TV, 1986)

In the Public Domain Review, Andrew Glassard speculates that Sherlock Holmes may have been involved in espionage between "The Final Problem" (1893) and "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1903). He also looks at the backdrop of international intrigue behind "Empty House."

Three Cases of Murder (1955).

As the title indicates, there are three segments to Three Cases of Murder. "In the Picture" (from a story by Scottish writer Roderick Wilkinson) features a painting with supernatural elements. "You Killed Elizabeth" (from a 1951 story by Davis Dresser, aka Brett Halliday) involves two friends competing over a woman, who is subsequently killed. Orson Welles directs (and is the title character) "Lord Mountdrago" (from a story by Somerset Maugham), in which the tormented Welles grapples with the effects of his cruelty on a politician colleague.

50th anniversary: The death of Arthur Upfield.

Philip Morton in the Southern Highland News (Australia) notes the 50th anniversary of the death of British-born author Arthur Upfield, an important figure in Australian crime fiction as the creator of aboriginal detective Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte. Bony debuted in The Barrakee Mystery (1929, aka The Lure of the Bush) and appeared in 29 works. An Edgar nominee for The Bushman who Came Back (1957), he influenced authors such as Tony Hillerman. Assessing Upfield's place in Australian and international literature is Investigating Arthur Upfield: A Centenary Collection of Critical Essays. The TV movie 3 Acts of Murder (2009) delves into the fatal results when a friend of Upfield used one of the author's fictional methods of murder. 

Film on author Lloyd Alexander.

Jared Crossley, the director of Lloyd Alexander, has dropped the price of the DVD of his film on the noted American fantasy author (best known for the Chronicles of Prydain) in honor of what would have been Alexander's 90th birthday in 2014. The DVD is now $10.

Stolen (2006).

Stolen, a documentary by Rebecca Dreyfus, delves into the 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, with special attention to the role of art detective Harold Smith.

New Clues CFP: Patricia Highsmith.

Le cri du hibou (The Cry of the Owl),
dir. Claude Chabrol (1987, based on
the novel by Patricia Highsmith)

A Call for Papers has been posted for the Clues 2015 issue "Re-Evaluating Patricia Highsmith," guest edited by Fiona Peters (Bath Spa University, UK). Proposals for articles are due by May 1.

TLS on the model for a Buchan villain.

David Warner as
Appleton in
The 39 Steps (1978)

The Times Literary Supplement's Michael Caines discusses a new book on Sir Edgar Speyer, considered a model for a villain in John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915).

Huston's Three Strangers (1946).

In Three Strangers, a lottery ticket spells trouble for Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Geraldine Fitzgerald. Story by John Huston, with a screenplay by Huston and Howard Koch.

August Derleth: Best mysteries of 1969.

Essential Solitude: The Letters of
H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
Hippocampus P

In the Dec. 6, 1969, issue of the Capital [WI] Times, August Derleth (creator of the Holmes-like Solar Pons) listed his selections for the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books of 1969. Mysteries and sci-fi appeared under the subtitle "Entertainments" rather than the "Fiction" category. It may have been ethically questionable that he listed H. P. Lovecraft et al.'s Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos—which was issued by Arkham House, the publishing firm he cofounded.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo and Daphne du Maurier's The House on the Strand were two of his fiction selections, whereas two of his sci-fi picks were Fritz Leiber's A Spectre Is Haunting Texas and Douglas Warner's Death on a Warm Wind. His mystery selections included:

Allingham, Margery. The Allingham Casebook. Campion and Charlie Luke short stories
Bernkopf, Jean F., ed. Boucher's Choicest. Some of Anthony Boucher's picks for best mystery short stories
Carr, John Dickson. The Ghosts' High Noon.
Carter, Philip Youngman. Mr. Campion's Farthing. Carter was Allingham's widower
Christie, Agatha. By the Pricking of My Thumbs.
Davies, L. P. Stranger to Town.
Fish, Robert L. The Murder League.
Gardner, John. A Complete State of Death.
Kahn, Joan, ed. Hanging by a Thread.
Marric, J. J [John Creasey]. Gideon's Power.
Marsh, Ngaio. Clutch of Constables.
Queen, Ellery, ed. Queen's Minimysteries.
Simenon, Georges. Maigret in Vichy (aka Maigret Takes the Waters)
Stout, Rex. Death of a Dude.
Whitney, Phyllis A. The Winter People.

Clues' Brooks Hefner on S. S. Van Dine, With Good Reason radio.

On the February 15 episode of the radio program With Good Reason, James Madison University's Brooks Hefner discusses the heretofore unknown pseudonym he uncovered of Philo Vance creator S. S. Van Dine (featured in his Clues article), Van Dine's alter ego of Willard Huntington Wright, and Wright's work in the context of highbrow/lowbrow debates of his time. The same program features Longwood University's Christopher McGee talking about the Hardy Boys series.