The Bunburyist
Featuring History of Mystery/Detective Fiction and Other Literary Ramblings of Elizabeth Foxwell
Monday, March 25, 2024
2024 Dove awardee: Barry Forshaw.
Monday, March 18, 2024
CFP, Clues Teaching Forum: Crime Fiction in the Multilingual Classroom.
Crime fiction sheds a light on different cultures and societies, as well as challenges assumptions about gender, class, race, and ethnicity. By luring students into thinking that popular fiction is an easy read, an increasing number of language teachers have used crime fiction to teach both foreign languages and cultures. At the same time, crime fiction instructors have expanded their syllabi to include texts in translation that tackle important issues such as gender violence, environmental concerns, and racism. This Clues Teaching Forum invites short essays that address the following questions:
- How has multilingualism shaped a personal approach to the teaching of crime fiction?
- What are the challenges of teaching a text in the original language?
- What are the challenges in using a text in translation?
- How are the expectations of multilingual students accommodated?
- What mystery/detective/crime works have been successful in representing a society and a culture or in effectively teaching a second language?
- Has an instructor elected to no longer teach certain texts or to teach certain texts differently?
We are interested in case studies related to teaching:
- Texts in the original language in language classes
- Texts in translation
- Crime shows with subtitles
- Classes with multilingual students
- Multilingualism within texts
Contributions of 750 to 1,000 words are sought for vol. 43, no. 1 (2025). Accounts from all classroom spaces (high schools, postsecondary institutions, prisons, etc.) and instructors at all stages of their careers are welcome. Submissions are due September 1, 2024. For more information or to submit essays, please contact Barbara Pezzotti (Barbara.pezzotti [at] monash.edu)
Monday, March 11, 2024
How does your garden grow?
Monday, March 04, 2024
Judge Dee rules.
China Daily reports that Netflix is picking up the series (Netflix lists it as debuting on March 16).
Monday, February 26, 2024
The contributions of Wilkie Collins.
Wilkie Collins. NYPL. |
Monday, February 19, 2024
1950s thriller posters.
In the Ransom Center Magazine, Ash Kinney D'Harcourt looks at the design of some 1950s film posters, including for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (with Cary Grant, 1959) and Ken Hughes's Case of the Red Monkey (aka Little Red Monkey, with Richard Conte, 1955).
Monday, February 12, 2024
The legend of Vidocq.
Eugène-François Vidocq. NYPL |
Monday, February 05, 2024
Just published: James Sallis companion.
Monday, January 29, 2024
K.K. Beck's work on TV.
I've been slow to discover Hallmark's Jane Mysteries series based on K. K. Beck's novels with Jane da Silva, a sleuth who tackles difficult cases (A Hopeless Case, Amateur Night, Electric City, Cold Smoked). One TV movie has been produced to date:
• "Inheritance Lost" (based on Beck's A Hopeless Case)
There is a 1994 TV movie, Shadow of Obsession, with Veronica Hamel that was an adaptation of Beck's stalker novel Unwanted Attentions (a novel greatly admired by Elizabeth Peters).
Monday, January 22, 2024
The wide effects of art theft.
Monday, January 15, 2024
The sensational Wilkie Collins.
Monday, January 08, 2024
Mysteries entering the public domain.
Mysteries that have entered the public domain and are on the online Project Gutenberg:
A.E.W. Mason. NYPL |
• As a Thief in the Night by R. Austin Freeman (a Dr. Thorndyke mystery). "One of the most satisfactory detective stories we have read."—Walter R. Brooks, The Outlook
• Ashenden; or the British Agent by Somerset Maugham (based on Maugham's experiences in World War I). "An urbane series of stories dealing with the diplomatic side of Secret Service work"—Saturday Review
• Behind That Curtain by Earl Derr Biggers (a Charlie Chan mystery). "Excellent"—Gilbert Seldes, Saturday Review (pb edition here)
• The Footsteps at the Lock by Father (later Msgr.) Ronald Knox (a Miles Bredon mystery). "breezy characterization and satirical humour"—The Spectator (pb edition here)
• Murder in the Maze by J.J. Connington. "[T]he usual false clues are skillfully suggested, and the reading public may well be surprised and amused to the end."—The English Review (pb edition here)
• The Prisoner in the Opal by A.E.W. Mason (an Inspector Hanaud mystery). "another intriguing story of mystery and thrilling adventure"—Wanganui Chronicle (Wellington, Australia; pb edition here)
• The Velvet Hand: New Madame Storey Mysteries by Hulbert Footner. "thoughtfully and ingeniously constructed"—New York Times
Monday, January 01, 2024
Collins & Dickens: Exhibition and conference.
The Univ of Buckingham will host the conference "Collins and Dickens—Dickens and Collins" on June 20–21, 2014, to celebrate the bicentennial of Collins' birth and examine matters such as Dickens' role as mentor to Collins and Collins' influence on Dickens, Dickens-Collins projects (such as The Frozen Deep) and rivalries, and theatrical and film productions of their works. Proposals are due Jan 31, 2024.
Wilkie Collins (top), Charles Dickens. NYPL |
Monday, December 25, 2023
August Derleth's Christmas cards.
1939 studio portrait of August Derleth by Ephraim Burt Trimpey |
Monday, December 18, 2023
Exhibition: "The Victorian World in Flux."
More on the exhibition here.
Monday, December 11, 2023
New French translations of Chandler.
Monday, December 04, 2023
McFarland's December sale.
New from McFarland: God and the Great Detective |
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
McFarland bk sale (incl Companions to Mystery Fiction).
Monday, November 20, 2023
Exhibition: "The Victorian Book."
The Police News from the Lilly Library exhibition |
Running through December 15, 2023, at Indiana University Bloomington's Lilly Library is "The Victorian Book: From the Gutter to the Stars," which features an array of books (including mystery) with formats and designs new to the era.
Monday, November 13, 2023
English translation, "The Dog with Vanishing Spots."
Tufts University's Quillon Arkenstone discusses and translates "The Dog with Vanishing Spots," a 1939 story by Japanese author Miyano Murako (aka Tsuno Kō, 1917–90), in the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Arkenstone highlights Murako's use of logical reasoning, a colonial setting, and a female sleuth.
Monday, November 06, 2023
Sherlock Holmes through an ethical lens.
Monday, October 30, 2023
An Agatha Christie cookbook.
Monday, October 23, 2023
Upcoming Poe exhibition.
Monday, October 16, 2023
Sale, McFarland's horror books.
Brian Patrick Duggan's Horror Dogs |
Joseph Maddrey's Adapting Stephen King, vol. 2 |
Monday, October 09, 2023
Perry Mason and Della Street: Colleagues or more?
Donald Woods as Perry Mason and Ann Dvorak as Della Street in The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937) |
Monday, October 02, 2023
Mysterious Journey: "Poirot and the Body on the Train."
Monday, September 25, 2023
Clues 41.2: Chilean detective fiction, Connelly, Johnson, Penny, Teaching Forum on Crime Fiction and Creative Writing.
Clues 41.2 (2023) has been published (abstracts below). For a print issue or a subscription, contact McFarland.
• Ebooks available (Kindle, Nook, Google Play).
Introduction: “The Warp and Woof of Every Moment”
CAROLINE REITZ (John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center)
The executive editor of Clues provides an overview of the issue, including articles on Chilean crime fiction, on Batman, and on detective fiction and philosophy;a Teaching Forum on the relationship of crime fiction and creative writing; and articles on authors Sherman Alexie, Michael Connelly, Craig Johnson, Kevin Major, and Louise Penny.
Spotlight on... Detective Fiction in Chile: Developments in the Genre
KATE M. QUINN (Univ of Galway, Ireland)
This article discusses the consolidation in the 1990s of Chile’s neopolicial works that combine hard-boiled and political elements, reassesses earlier twentieth- century genre writers, and examines the wider diversity of production up to the present day. It considers the conditions of genre production in Chile and the challenge of wider access to international readers.
“Still harping on daughters”: Maddie in Michael Connelly’s Hieronymus Bosch Series
HEATHER DUBROW (Fordham Univ)
In Michael Connelly’s books about detective Hieronymus Bosch, Bosch’s daughter Maddie is closely connected to many preoccupations of the series even when a seemingly minor presence. Romance texts such as Arthurian narratives and Spenser’s Faerie Queene are the best keys to interpreting Maddie’s roles in the series and larger questions about crime fiction.
From Alexie’s Indian Killer to Johnson’s Longmire Series: Expanding the Landscape of the American Indian Detective Novel
ELIZABETH ABELE (Gulf Univ for Science & Technology, Kuwait)
The essay examines Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer, a crime novel that critiques Native American culture mediated through White American commerce, authors, and academics, as well as Craig Johnson’s Longmire series as a development and a departure from American Indian crime fiction in the late-twentieth century.
“Not everything buried is actually dead”:
The Detective as Historian in Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (2010)
AOILEANN NÍ ÉIGEARTAIGH
(Dundalk Inst of Technology, Ireland)
Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (2010) inserts a Francophone detective into the heart of English culture in Québec, facilitating an investigation of historical Québécois tensions between the communities. Inspector Gamache’s resolution of the case suggests that acknowledging these cultural differences and finding a way to compromise are characteristics that continue to distinguish contemporary Canadian society.
Sunset Tourism in Kevin Major’s One for the Rock, Two for the Tablelands, and Three for Trinity: Travel and Identity in Three Newfoundland and Labrador Crime Novels
TOM HALFORD (Memorial Univ of Newfoundland, Canada)
This essay considers the complex relationship among crime fiction, tourism, and identity in One for the Rock, Two for the Tablelands, and Three for Trinity by Kevin Major, which are set in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Major flirts with the concept of dark tourism as he takes readers into sites of loss and trauma but ultimately is more invested in highlighting and preserving aspects of provincial identity.
Monday, September 18, 2023
Clues CFP: "Disability and Detective Fiction"
Theme Issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection
Guest Editors: Susannah B. Mintz (Skidmore College) and Mark Osteen (Loyola University Maryland)
The guest editors welcome proposals for a theme issue of Clues focusing on the representation of disability, broadly defined, in crime and mystery fiction, television shows, films, and other media. We seek a wide range of critical and cultural perspectives on how bodymind anomalousness features in stories about wrongdoing, from the maimed and scarred villains of Conan Doyle to the neurodivergent hero-sleuths of contemporary popular culture. In what ways have impairment, disfigurement, and disease been used to raise the stakes of fear and upheaval in crime stories? How do such narratives perpetuate or challenge ableist notions of order and resolution? Does corporeal vulnerability stoke our pity, sympathy, or admiration—whether for criminals, victims, or detectives whose genius seems to triumph over adversity? Conversely, do the contours of disability facilitate alternative modes of sleuthing and lead to unexpected forms of justice? What alternate forms of knowledge do these characters and texts present and endorse? Since the genre of crime by definition entails what and how we know, how have authors—over time and around the world—engaged disability to probe the meaning of truth?
Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
• Disability as the mark of criminality
• Disability as a crime—or as damage—that must be redeemed
• Disability as metaphor for social decay
• Supercrip crime solvers and criminals
• Analytical prowess as compensation for physical or emotional loss
• Neurodivergence and the lonely sleuth
• Intersectional plots pairing disability with gender, race, class, and sexuality
• Disability as affective vector: upping the emotional ante
• Specific impairments as modes of knowing: detection and “cripistemology”
Submissions should include a proposal of 250–300 words and a brief bio. Proposals due: March 15, 2024. Submit proposals to: Prof. Susannah B. Mintz, Dept. of English, Skidmore College, email: smintz@skidmore.edu, and Prof. Mark Osteen, Dept. of English, Loyola University Maryland, email: MOsteen@loyola.edu. Full manuscripts of 5,000 to 6,500 words based on an accepted proposal will be due in September 2024.
Monday, September 11, 2023
Learning languages through mysteries.
André Klein's Heidis Frühstück: A Detective Story for German Language Learners |
I love this 4 September 2024 article by Mengmeng Tu in I, Science about learning another language through detective stories. It's further evidence that the mystery genre serves many purposes (like Rapid Reads' mysteries to encourage reluctant readers, English as a second language learners, and adults involved in literacy programs).
FYI, the Summer 2021 issue of I, Science focuses on Mystery, with articles such as "The Serial Killer Gene: Myth or Truth?" and "Is Deduction Even Science, Mr. Holmes?"
Monday, September 04, 2023
New audiobook: The D'Arblay Mystery by R. Austin Freeman.
A new free audiobook from Librivox is The D'Arblay Mystery by inverted mystery pioneer and physician R. Austin Freeman. First published in 1926, the novel features forensic expert Dr. John Thorndyke looking into the death of a sculptor that appears to be suicide. A reviewer in the 26 Sept. 1926 New York Times praised its "exciting climax." The 13 Oct. 1926 Punch reviewer deemed it "engrossing enough, but it is also a little intricate." H. C. Harwood in the 4 Sept. 1926 Outlook declared, "'The D'Arblay Mystery' is the best detective story I have struck of late; so elaborate, so logical, so persuasive."
Illustration from R. Austin Freeman's "The Blue Sequin," June 1910 McClure's Magazine |