Curtis Evans

FYI REVIEW This book contains essays by the following writers with extensive bibliographies for TBR miners.
-Introduction by Curtis Evans
Part One: Locked Doors
-The Queer Story of Fergus Hume by Lucy Sussex
-A Redemptive Masquerade: Gender Identity in Samuel Hopkins Adams’ The Secret of Lonesome Cove by J.F. Norris
-Dropping Hairpins in Golden Age Detective Fiction: Man-Haters, Green Carnations and Gunsels by Noah Stewart
“Queer in some ways”: Gay Characters in the Fiction of Agatha Christie
-Agatha Christie: Norms and Codes by Michael Moon
-The Unshockable Mrs. Bradley: Sex and Sexuality in the Work of Gladys Mitchell by Brittain Bright
-“Less beautiful in daylight”: Josephine Tey and the Anxiety of Gender by J.. Bernthal by J.C. Bernthal
-“Mutually devoted”: Female Relationships in Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes by Moira Redmond
-“The man with the laughing eyes”: Socialism and Same-Sex Desire in G. D. H. Cole’s The Death of a Millionaire by Curtis Evans
-Humdrum Ecstasies: C. H. B. Kitchin and His Detective, Malcolm Warren by Michael Moon
-“Two young men who write as one”: Richard Wilson Webb, Hugh Callingham Wheeler, Male Couples and The Grindle Nightmare by Curtis Evans
-Queering the Investigation: Explanation and Understanding in Todd Downing’s Detective Fiction by Charles J. Rzepka
-“A bad, bad past”: Rufus King, Clifford Orr, College Drag and Detective Fiction
-Foppish, Effeminate, or “a little too handsome”: Coded Character Descriptions and Masculinity in the Mystery Novels of Mignon G. Eberhart by Curtis Evans
Part Two: Skeleton Keys
-“The finest triumvirate of perversion, horror and murder written this spring”: Frank Walford’s Twisted Clay by James Dong
-Wayne Lonergan’s Long Shadow: A Forties Murder and Its Literary Legacy by Drewey Wayne Gunn
-“Claude was doing all right”: Homosexuality, Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Evolution of Ross Macdonald by Tom Nolan
-“Elegant stuff … of its sort”: Gore Vidal’s Edgar Box Detective Novels by Curtis Evans
-“Adonis in person”: Same-Sex Intimacy and Male Eroticism in the Detective Novels of Beverley Nichols by J.F. Norris
-More Than Fiction: Troublesome Themes in the Life and Writing of Nancy Spain by Bruce Shaw
-Man to Man: The Two-Men Theme in the Novels of Patricia Highsmith by Nick Jones
-Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Joseph Hansen’s Known Homosexual by Josh Layton
-I Am the Most! Camping It Up in George Baxt’s Pharoah Love Mystery Series by J.F. Norris… (mais)

Not my cup of tea, ultimately. Without giving too much away, it was a bit sensational (in the old sense of the term), and the resolution of the case mostly unsatisfying. Secondary characters weren't particularly interesting (nor primary characters, come to think of it), and I pretty much only kept reading on the off-chance that this new-to-me author might be building up to something surprisingly fantastic. She didn't.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, I'm a bit more ruthless.… (mais)