Culture
Stephen Spotswood On “Queering the Narrative of the Golden Age of America”
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When things seem to be going badly in a society, people sympathize with characters who distrust or operate outside of that society’s governing systems…In eras tinged with chaos in the popular imagination, noir thrives.” –Megan Abbott One of my handful of jobs–because I can’t spend every hour of the day making up murders–is teaching playwriting…
Getting Ready to Say Goodbye to Fargo
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This November, FX released the fifth and possibly final season of the popular anthology series Fargo. Based on the 1996 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, and set in that film’s extended universe (every property needs one these days), Fargo the series has been some ride thus far. Since its debut in 2014, the show…
“The Mousetrap”: Still Going Strong After 28,000 Performances
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On the day Agatha Christie died in 1976, London theaters dimmed their lights for an hour in a show of esteem for her. While best known as the top-selling novelist of all time, Christie also set a record for the longest running stage production. The play she predicted would last 8 months, The Mousetrap, opened…
Learning to Be Lost (and Found) in Fiction and in Life
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It’s 1986, and I’m lost in the forest. I’m ten years old, huddled at the base of a Ponderosa pine at the far reaches of Silver Lake, California, one of innumerous small, high Alpine lakes strewn across the Sierra Nevada mountains like blue-green jewels in a tangled necklace. It’s getting dark, and I haven’t seen…
From Academic to Crime Writer
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“You can’t be serious.” Twice in my life, academic colleagues and friends have had that reaction when I’ve told them what I was planning to do. The first time was in the early 1990s, when I decided to teach a course on LGBT politics at the University of California, San Diego, one of the first…
Kenneth Branagh and De-Poiroting Hercule Poirot
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A man with his back to the world waits for two impossible and perfect eggs. He follows an officer to the transport as a dream-generated locomotive leaves the story. He dreams of a holiday in Egypt and wakes up in the gnarls of memory’s black and white world; his famous face is shaped by loss…
An Argument for the Unintentional Villain
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A good villain is essential to a good mystery. He or she is the author of the crime, the driver of the plot, and the key to solving the ensuing investigation. Often, the more cunning and deceitful the villain, the more satisfying their unmasking and capture. This is one reason for the public fascination with…
Healing Through Horror
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Oh, the Horror! It doesn’t often come up but when it does, people are often surprised when I tell them I never set out to be a horror writer. Sure, I’m a die-hard, lifelong fan of the genre, and it was reading Stephen King’s The Shining at thirteen that opened my mind and imagination to…
How the True (and Still Unsolved) 1986 Assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Inspired My Nordic Noir Novel
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The movie was a spur-of-the-moment idea. The prime minister had had a stressful week. Seeing a comedy with his wife and son and his son’s girlfriend was just the tonic that Olof Palme needed. Bodyguards? It would have been cruel to call them back to work on a Friday night. Besides, this was cozy, peaceful…