The Golden Age of detective fiction coincided with a different sort of Golden Age among African-Americans: The Harlem Renaissance. Arguably no-one could have been described better as a Renaissance Man, than Rudolph Fisher, the author of The Conjure-Man Dies. A graduate of Brown University and Howard University Medical School, he was the author of scientific papers and political tracts promoting […]
As a 14-year-old in 1967, my principal reason for living was marathon listening to Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. Distraction arrived at the end of the year in the form of a movie that immediately earned lifelong status as my favorite crime flick. From the standard list of film genres, it also rates near the top of my favorite
This is the third in our member-written series: My Favorite Crime Movie. Despite our fondness for (obsession with?) serial killers, conventional wisdom says one is much more likely to be killed by a spouse than by a total stranger. And statistics say husbands do away with wives more than vice versa. But don’t tell that to filmmakers. Much to the consternation
If Patricia Highsmith were writing today, she’d surely be the showrunner for one of the great psychological thrillers currently gracing the small screen. We live not just in the golden age of television, but in the golden age of my favorite sub-genre of TV crime show. Call it psychological suspense, domestic noir, or what you will. These shows mine intimate relationships,
This is the second in our member-written series: My Favorite Crime Movie. Alfred Hitchcock said several times that Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was his favorite of the films he directed. The film is set in Santa Rosa, California. If I tell you that the last time I was in California, I went in search of Santa Rosa, you’ll have
This is the first in our member-written series: My Favorite Crime Movie. I graduated from the University of Florida law school at the end of 1977 and stayed in Gainesville for almost another year, trying to figure out what to do – a process I’ve since learned may pause but never quite ends. North Central Florida was rough and rural, but
This is the second in our member-written series: My Favorite Golden Age Mystery. Like many good stories, Dame Agatha Christie’s novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd developed from an idea tossed off playfully by two of her friends. The novel was published in 1926, early in her career, and was merely the third time Hercule Poirot, her Belgian private investigator,
This begins a new series on our blog: My Favorite Golden Age Mystery, written by our members. Her father gave her a gun. Nancy Drew, girl detective, was about to embark on the adventure of The Hidden Staircase (1930), and her father was worried. “[Y]ou’ve often said you wanted me to grow up self-reliant and brave,” she countered. And she had
CHARLES ARDAI is one of those people whose energy, acuity, and achievements make you wonder what the heck you’ve been doing with your life. He’s won the Edgar, Shamus and Ellery Queen Awards, plus he is the author of five novels, including Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence. As the founding editor of the acclaimed pulp fiction imprint Hard Case Crime, he
The Internet, as we’ve all discovered, is a mixed blessing. One of its decided pleasures, however, is the ease with which books can be found. When I worked in a bookstore in Los Angeles over 20 years ago, if a book was out of print, there were only two options for the reader: look for it at every bookstore you stepped
