"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.