Mystery Melange

A new major exhibition about Edgar Allan Poe opened this week at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Titled "Enigmatic Edgar A. Poe in Baltimore & Beyond," the exhibit features highlights from the Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Edgar Allan Poe, one of the finest private collections of Poe materials in the world. Items include Poe's first published book of poems, one of only 12 known copies and "the most celebrated rarity in American literature; the story that launched Poe's career as an author, "MS. Found in a Bottle," published when he won a contest in The Baltimore Saturday Visiter; "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" as they first appeared to readers in magazines, and much more.

The biennial NoirCon is coming up very soon in Philadelphia, October 26-30 in fact, but it's not too late to register. This year's convention features David L. Goodis Award winner, Aurélien Masson (editorial director, Série Noire, Éditions Gallimard); the winners of The Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence, Charles Ardai (author and publisher, Hard Case Crime) and Stona Fitch (author and publisher, Concord Free Press); and the recipient of The Anne Friedberg Award for Contributions to Noir and Its Preservation, Barry Gifford (author, screenwriter, and publisher, Black Lizard). There are also a plethora of fun panels, The Hammett Award luncheon, and a Noir at the Bar at the Pen & Pencil Club with 16 authors on hand, all corralled by crime fiction blogger, critic and reviewer Peter Rozovsky. Check out the full schedule here.
 
ITW online Thriller School is open for registration. In this seven-week program, beginning March 13th, 2017, the craft of thriller writing will be front and center with topics covering Storytelling, Voice, Character, Plot, Point of View, Dialogue and Setting, Mood, and Atmosphere. Instructors David Corbett, F. Paul Wilson, Lee Child, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Meg Gardiner, James Scott Bell, and Peter James will teach an aspect of craft through podcasts, an online Q&A, and written materials.

The Guardian profiled the new line of crime comics from Hard Case Crime and Titan Comics. The stellar lineup starts off today with the release of Triggerman, the tale of a convict in Prohibition-era Chicago on a mission to save the girl he left behind, from Walter Hill, director of 1979 cult classic gang movie The Warriors. That will be followed a week later by Peepland, written by crime authors Gary Phillips and Christa Faust (herself a former peep show employee) about the seedy goings-on at 1980s Times Square peep show booths.

Likewise, author James Robinson (Scarlet Witch, Starman) is stepping into the world of James Bond in an all-new graphic novel miniseries authorized by Ian Fleming Publications. The project centers around the famous spy's CIA ally and friend Felix Leiter, who first appeared alongside James Bond in Ian Fleming's very first novel, Casino Royale. In the new series, Leiter, now operating as an independent investigator, finds himself in Japan, tracking down a beautiful Russian spy from his past. But when the mission takes a turn for the worse, he will discover that there are more deadly schemes taking shape in Tokyo ... and beyond.

In Val McDermid's essay on PD James for The Guardian, she notes that James "faced the darkness head on" and subverted the coziness of golden-age crime fiction. James once wrote a fascinating monograph on the subject of Golden Age crime, Talking About Detective Fiction, and the same love for the work of her predecessors is evident in a new collection of James' short stories.

As the Hollywood Reporter noted, Hollywood Is getting back in the Agatha Christie business. While the work of the "Queen of Crime" has been made into dozens of film, TV and stage adaptations, there hasn't been a major theatrical feature in the past 30 years since the "lackluster" 1985 film Ordeal by Innocence, starring Donald Sutherland and Christopher Plummer. But that's all changing, thanks to the efforts of the Christie estate to introduce her stories to a new generation.

The Daily Mail looked at how Ian Fleming smuggled WWII Enigma secrets into James Bond’s adventures after the author became so interested in Bletchley Park, he left clues in the books in a "wild contravention" of the Official Secrets Act.

Writing for LitHub, Melissa Ginsburg takes a look at "10 Books Featuring Subversive Women," a reading list for defying society's expectations.

Jon Land, author of Strong Cold Dead, compiled a list of "The 12 Best Book to Film Adaptations," many of which are crime dramas.

In celebration of director Curtis Hanson's work, Gareme Ross lists "The ten greatest neo-noir films," with dark themes, crime and thrills, and morally ambiguous characters at their core.

This week, the featured crime poem over at the 5-2 is "Conscience," by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Daniella Bernett stopped by Omnimystery News to talk about her Emmeline Kirby/Gregory Longdon mystery series; Val McDermid spoke with The Independent about how to be a best-selling crime writer, her writing process, and her latest book, Out of Bounds; and the New York Times snagged Tana French for a "By the Book" Q&A.