The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: mystery

  • “Let Me Entertain You”: Mystery Novels About Acting

    Starting with Sondheim, this morning. Others may wake, stretch, and repeat soothing words of affirmation. I wake, shake off the frissons of anxiety about workplace dreams (only recently) and then decide on a Sondheim lyric to get me through the day. I’ve been steeped in Stephen Sondheim’s work since I was about 12 and found…

  • 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…