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The Enduring Appeal of Murder and Mystery: A Brief History
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“Thou shalt not kill,” commands the King James Bible— without, as opponents of capital punishment like to point out, riders or qualifiers. Curiously, this translation of an injunction in…
Who Was Benedict Arnold, Before He Became America’s Most Notorious Traitor
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The sudden arrival of a horseman on a Friday afternoon electrified New Haven. Israel Bissell leapt from his saddle and shouted for the village selectmen. His eyes bulged with…
Cats and Cozies, Cozies and Cats
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Cats and cozies go together like Romeo and Juliet. Mac and cheese. Ernie and Bert. The term cozies was coined in the 1990’s for mysteries that take place in…
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…
Femi Kayode Considers Groups, Belief Systems, and the Village of Readers
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When I am asked if my new novel, Gaslight, was inspired by real events, I answer no. But while the events themselves didn’t happen; the emotional center of the…
The Many Ways to Be a Scoundrel in Early America
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In the summer of 1787, as the Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia, General James Wilkinson journeyed to New Orleans to visit Spanish Governor Esteban Miró, ostensibly about obtaining…
Sinking Into the Gothic Gloom: My Favourite Works
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I’ve always struggled with some of the prevailing definitions of ‘gothic’ fiction. Tradition dictates there should be elements of fear, threat, woe, that hauntings should occur and vile things…
The Mystery of Real Estate Porn
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It’s a game in New York and we all play. Everyone talks real estate, how the condo market’s soft, how the rental market’s skyrocketing, how Manhattan’s suddenly affordable but…
Crime and the City: Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight
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Portsmouth – known to the locals as “Pompey” – is, and has been for centuries, England’s largest Royal Navy base, 75 miles south of London in the country of…