The Shadow Man (aka Street of Shadows, 1953).

Cesar Romero 
in The Shadow Man (1953)

In The Shadow Man, saloon owner Cesar Romero is framed for murder and must prove that he is innocent. The film is based on The Creaking Chair by Laurence Meynell.

Homes of local mystery writers.

The website DC Writers' Homes—a project of Humanities DC—features residences of such writers as James M. Cain (6707 44th Ave, University Park, MD), Roald Dahl (2136 R St NW in DC), Rudolph Fisher (1607 S St NW in DC), Lucille Fletcher (3435 8th St S, Arlington, VA), Mary Roberts Rinehart (2419 Massachusetts Ave NW and 2660 Woodley Rd in DC), and Manley Wade Wellman (400 Shepherd St NW in DC).

Mary Roberts Rinehart with chauffeur outside her
home at 2419 Massachusetts Ave NW in
Washington, DC (now the Embassy of Zambia).
ca. 1920s-early 1930s. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division

Spies of the Air (1939).

Roger Livesey in Spies of the Air (1939)

In Spies of the Air, British intelligence hunts for the thief of secret airplane plans. Based on the play Official Secret by Jeffrey Dell, the film stars Roger Livesey and Basil Radford, with an interesting name appearing as film editor: future director David Lean.

Exhibition inspired by Hitchcock films.

Beth Accomando on station KPBS discusses an art exhibition based on Hitchcock films that will be on view at San Diego's Subterranean Coffee Boutique until September 6.

Moment of Indiscretion (1958).

In Moment of Indiscretion, a woman faces a murder charge when she will not reveal where she was at the time of the crime.

Avbl for preorder: Companion on Ian Rankin.

Now available for preorder is the upcoming volume 10—on the works of John Rebus creator Ian Rankin—in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit. Author and Fanshawe College professor Erin E. MacDonald wrote the earlier, well-regarded companion on Ed McBain/Evan Hunter. Volume 10 provides a comprehensive examination of Rankin's writing career, including short stories that the Scottish author had forgotten he had written and interesting sidelights such as the Rebus play Long Shadows.

Rough Shoot (1953).

Joel McCrea in Rough Shoot (1953)

In Rough Shoot (aka Shoot First), former US colonel Joel McCrea becomes entangled with murder and a spy ring in England. The film is based on A Rough Shoot by Geoffrey Household, with a screenplay by Eric Ambler. Costars include Evelyn Keyes, Herbert Lom, and Marius Goring.

New publications on Sayers.

Some new books dealing with Dorothy L. Sayers:

• Tippermuir Books follows up its collection of Sayers book reviews (ed. Martin Edwards) with God, Hitler, and Lord Peter Wimsey, a collection of articles, essays, and speeches by Sayers, including a radio broadcast that has never been published before.

• Anglican Woman Novelists from T&T Clark covers Sayers and P. D. James, among other female authors.

• Coming in October from InterVarsity Press: Choosing Community: Action, Faith, and Joy in the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers

A Man Betrayed (1941).

In A Man Betrayed, John Wayne is a small-town attorney looking into the suspicious death of a friend and uncovers skullduggery in big-city politics. Frances Dee and Ward Bond costar.

Hillerman biography in progress.

This article in the July 7 Albuquerque Journal on the University of New Mexico's Center for Southwest Research reveals that author James McGrath Morris (Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power) is working on a biography of Tony Hillerman.

One Body Too Many (1944).

In One Body Too Many, mild-mannered insurance agent Albert Tuttle (Jack Haley) encounters scheming relatives of a recently deceased millionaire who seem intent on doing away with the millionaire's niece (Jean Parker). Bela Lugosi costars.

The nefarious state of Wisconsin.

In the Wisconsin State Journal, several mystery authors (such as Victoria Houston, who writes the Loon Lake mystery series with fly-fishing enthusiast and chief of police Lewellyn Ferris) discuss why the state is such an inviting setting for mystery.

The Big Frame (aka The Lost Hours, 1952).

In The Big Frame, pilot Mark Stevens quarrels with a friend, waking up the next morning at a unfamiliar hotel as Scotland Yard's top suspect in the friend's murder.

The gifts of Celia Fremlin.

Author Lucy Lethbridge in the July 2019 issue of The Oldie lauds Celia Fremlin's Edgar-winning The Hours Before Dawn (1958) and the skills applied by Fremlin from her time in the British project Mass Observation. Says Lethbridge, "This is a novel about intelligent, frustrated women in the impoverished disappointment of 1950s London."

Everything Is Thunder (1936).

Based on the novel by former British Army officer Jocelyn Lee Hardy, Everything Is Thunder features a prostitute (Constance Bennett) who attempts to help a prisoner of war (Douglas Montgomery) escape from Nazi Germany.

A walk with Anthony Boucher.

Jeffrey Marks's Anthony Boucher:
A Biobibliography (McFarland)

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association has scheduled a July 21 walk of South Berkeley (CA) locations associated with mystery/sci fi author-editor-critic Anthony Boucher (aka William Anthony Parker White). The walk will be guided by Randal Brandt, a librarian who curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library.

The Deadly Affair (1967).

In this adaptation of John le Carré's Call for the Dead (1961) that is directed by Sidney Lumet, a British agent (James Mason) is suspicious of the suicide of a man he had investigated (Robert Flemyng).

J. S. Fletcher celebrates a centenary.

New HarperCollins edition of Fletcher's
The Middle Temple Murder

In the Oxford Times, Christopher Gray celebrates the centenary of the publication of The Middle Temple Murder (1919) by Yorkshire-born Joseph Smith Fletcher, better known as J. S. Fletcher (1863–1935). Says Gray, "The novel put me very much in mind of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps." In the novel (read by presidential mystery fan Woodrow Wilson), a journalist and a Scotland Yard inspector see something more in a violent death than a robbery gone wrong.

More on Fletcher (who apparently also was a friend of T. S. Stribling)

"The Last of the Sommervilles" (1961).

In this episode of Thriller directed by Ida Lupino and cowritten by Lupino and her cousin Richard Lupino, a scheming heir plots to eliminate the competition for an inheritance. Phyllis Thaxter and Martita Hunt costar.

German films of Edgar Wallace works.

Edgar Wallace, Der Frosch mit der Maske
(Fellowship of the Frog)

On the Galactic Journey blog, Cora Buhlert discusses the popularity in Germany of film adaptations of the works of Edgar Wallace, including Der Zinker (The Squeaker) with Klaus Kinski.