Crime Lab Project

 

It's been awhile since I mentioned the Crime Lab Project. For those who don't know, it was started by a group of authors and associates who became concerned "about the gap between the public's beliefs about the current state of forensic science and the reality faced by the many underfunded, understaffed labs and coroners' offices throughout the country." CLP has since tried to help raise awareness about the situation, such as bringing attention to reports like one from the Department of Justice which found a national backlog of over 500,000 cases in U.S. publicly funded crime labs, with most sources agreeing this backlog has grown tremendously since.

Another report from the DJS in 2007 wasn't much better:  as of 2004, there were almost 13,500 unidentified human remains on record in medical examiner and coroners' offices across the country and only half of medical examiners and coroners' offices had policies for retaining records on unidentified human remains. Sadly, due to no national standard on ME/coroner practices, the person deciding whether or not a death will be referred for medical investigation may have no formal training in forensic science and may only be a political appointee.

For more info and to join the CLP efforts, check out this site.

The Brain Game

I came across an interesting article in Psychology Today published recently. Titled "The Genius of Detective Fiction,"  author Christopher Badcock makes the case that there's "no doubt that detective fiction—both in its vast quantity and intrinsic quality—is the distinctive literary genre of modern, industrial societies." He also looks at the almost Asperger-like personality of Sherlock Holmes (photographic memory, concentration, few social skills) as an example of mechanistic cognition, whereas Miss Marple's intuition and use of people skills is a form of mentalistic thinking. Badcock argues it's the way detective fiction combines extremes of the two types of mental processes that makes it so popular and helps create "insights of fictional genius." One bit of trivia from the article:  Sigmund Freud was an avid reader of thrillers.

Eventopia

 

PulpFest is welcoming award-winning author, editor, screenwriter, and biographer William F. Nolan as the Guest of Honor at this year’s convention, to be held July 30 to August 1 in Columbus, Ohio. Nolan is a leading authority on Max Brand and Dashiell Hammett as well as the other contributors to the Black Mask pulp magazine, appropriate since this year is the 90th anniversary of both Black Mask’s first issue and Max Brand’s first appearance in Western Story Magazine.

Margery Flax sent along reminders about the 2010 Edgar Awards Symposium, scheduled for Wednesday, April 28 from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the Edgar Awards Banquet, the next day, Thursday, April 29th at 6:30p.m. The Symposium has a great lineup this year, from the talk by Donald Maas on "Writing the Breakout Mystery," to panels on "Dialogue: Telling vs. Showing" moderated by Reed Farrel Coleman; "Short Stories vs. Novels" with S.J. Rozan moderating; "Fact vs. Fiction – Falling in Love With Your Research," moderated by Hank Phillippi Ryan; "Writing Juvenile & Young Adult Mysteries" officiated by Chris Gabenstein; and a Q&A with Lee Child & Laura Lippman who will be interviewed by Oline Cogdill.

Fresh on the heels of Poisoned Pen's first-ever online mystery conference, they'll also be offering a 3-day conference in Scottsdale with Rebecca Cantrell, PF Chisholm, Diana Gabaldon, Sophie Hannah, Vicki Hendricks, Michael Koryta, Sophie Littlefield, Gary Phillips, Dana Stabenow, Lauren Willig and other authors to be announced. The conference is so brand-new, it doesn't have a name yet—but if you submit the best suggestion, you could win a prize. Kicking off the event is a discussion led by Patrick Millkin, editor of Phoenix Noir, and along with readings and signings, there may be a Georgette Heyer Afternoon on Friday. The grand finale at the Biltmore Hotel includes a pajama party with late-night readings and "the hotel Bar is braced for people in PJs to buy booze to take to the ballroom."

Sherlock Continued

 

Titan Books recently began releasing several titles in a series they call "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,"  all pastiches written by different authors that were published years ago but were out of print. There will eventually be about ten in all, with the first four debuting in November of last year and two more coming up in February. Titan certainly had its share of Holmes-inspired books to choose from for this collection: Sherlockian scholar Philip K. Jones maintains a database of more than 8,000.

Here's a rundown of the six offerings in the Titan series released thus far:

• The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : War of the Worlds  by Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Wellman (father and son). Manly Wade Wellman was best known for his scifi, horror and fantasy. War of the Worlds was co-authored by Wellman and his son and taken from six short stories later combined into a novel length work. The idea came about after a viewing of the film A Study In Terror, (Holmes taking on Jack The Ripper) inspired Wade Jr. to think about what would happen if Holmes had taken on the Martians in H.G. Welles classic tale. Thus the premise of this work was born in which Sherlock Holmes, Professor George Challenger (another Doyle creation) and Dr. Watson find themselves in the middle of a prolonged alien invasion that decimates London, as they try to get to the bottom of the nature and intent of the attack.

• The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : The Veiled Detective by David Stuart Davies. Davies actually wrote six different Holmes pastiches, as well as an award-winning one-man play. In The Veiled Detective, a young Sherlock Holmes arrives in London to begin his career as a private detective, and catches the eye of the master criminal, Professor James Moriarty, who wants to find a way to control Holmes. Enter Dr. Watson, newly returned from Afghanistan, soon to make history as Holmes' companion. The premise turns the classic relationship between the two on its head, namely, what if everything you knew about Holmes and companions was actually orchestrated by none other than Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarty? 

• The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : The Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower. Stashower is also a magician and has been fascinated with both Houdini and Holmes throughout his career, writing books and articles on both, including the relationship between contemporaries Holmes and Houdini. In Stashower's very first novel, The Ectoplasmic Man, he has Harry Houdini framed and jailed for espionage. When Sherlock Holmes vows to clear his name, the two join forces to take on blackmailers who have targeted the Prince of Wales in a case people are calling "The Crime of the Century."

• The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : The Scroll of the Dead by David Stuart Davies. Davies is another author who has written extensively about Holmes and Conan Doyle, both in fiction and nonfiction. In his novel The Scroll of the Dead, Holmes attends a seance to unmask Sebastian Melmoth, an impostor posing as a medium. He soon finds Melmoth is a mad man hell-bent on obtaining immortality after the discovery of an ancient Egyptian papyrus, and it's up to Holmes and Watson to stop him and avert disaster as their quest takes them to Norfolk and Cumberland in England's Lake District.

• The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : The Man From Hell by Barrie Roberts. Barrie, who died in 2007, was a freelance journalist, folksinger and a criminal lawyer who still found time to pen ten Holmes pastiches in all. In his The Man From Hell, wealthy philanthropist Lord Backwater is found beaten to death on the grounds of his estate. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson have to get to the bottom of a 40-year-old secret to unravel the mystery which pits them against a ruthless new enemy and takes them across the globe in search of the killer.

• The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : The Stalwart Companions by  H. Paul Jeffers. Jeffers (who died in December 2009) wrote extensively on history topics, including a biography on Teddy Roosevelt. He also penned The Forgotten Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a book of stories based on the original radio plays by Anthony Boucher and Denis Green. The Stalwart Companion, which is "written" as if by future President Theodore Roosevelt (and "recently discovered" in the basement of the New York Police Department), is set long before Holmes' first encounter with Dr Watson, when the detective visits America to solve a most violent and despicable crime, the most taxing of his brilliant career.