The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: mystery

  • Ann Cleeves: An Appreciation

    I’m interrupting my set of four posts on academic mysteries to reflect on how brilliant Ann Cleeves’s Vera novels are, in particular. No shade to her other series, which are engaging and innovative as well. This past fall I was due to go to Knowlton, Quebec to see Louise Penny interview Cleeves, at a public…

  • Food, Feminism, and Mystery Fiction

    Beth Kalikoff, writing in 2006, called attention to the plethora of mystery novels, most of which were enduring series, that incorporated food directly into the murder plot and not always because the victim was poisoned. As she described, while noting that only limited critical attention had been paid to date to the phenomenon, mystery novels…

  • Joy and Pleasure

    Crime fiction gives its readers much pleasure; Louise Penny’s work, in particular, is attentive to the moments in life when we are “Surprised by Joy.” Penny put out a call in her January newsletter for life advice that’s worth sharing, and her assistant Linda Lyall, working from Scotland, responded with alacrity to the bromide I…