The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: mystery

  • When Authors Tire of Their Characters (But Can’t Just Kill Them Off)

    Holmes and Moriarty, 1893 illustration by Harry C. Edwards in McClure’s I’ve been enjoying Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem.” That’s the one, you’ll recall, based on the famous story where Holmes is tossed over Switzerland’s Reichanbach Falls by Moriarty, his arch-nemesis. Watson is left to re-trace his steps and mourn his…

  • 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…