The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: mystery

  • Nancy Drew Enters the Public Domain

    Ninety-five years after their original publication, the first four Nancy Drew novels (all published in 1930) have just entered the public domain in the United States. Without having glanced at them in more than four decades, I can still picture all of the covers and conjure up some plot details from The Secret of the…

  • New Year’s Eve: Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Nine Tailors and the Pealing of the Church Bells

    “From time to time complaints are made about the ringing of church bells. It seems strange that a generation which tolerates the uproar of the internal combustion engine and the wailing of the jazz band should be so sensitive to the one loud noise that is made to the glory of God.” In her Foreword…

  • Investigating Frances Shelley Wees

    Frances Shelley Wees (1902-82), a now largely neglected crime writer, was so popular during the 1950s and 60s that she was known as “the Agatha Christie of Canada.” And thanks to Véhicule Press’s Ricochet Books, two of her mystery-suspense novels have been re-issued over the last decade. An American-born author of educational works and children’s…