Penguin Modern Crime Announcement

 Penguin Modern Classics

CRIME & ESPIONAGE

Published by Penguin Modern Classics | 13 July 2023 | Paperback £9.99

First published 75 years ago, the iconic green Penguin Crime paperbacks have long held a special space in every crime lovers heart and bookshelf, as CrimeTime puts it: “If the Golden Age of Crime has a colour, it’s bottle green. And, if it has a smell, it’s the caramel of old paper. Nothing sums up crime fiction between the ages of flappers and flares quite so well as the classic Penguin Crime editions.” As one of our most popular imprints, the Penguin Crime series encompassed stories from Agatha Christie to Dashiell Hammett, and everything in between, expanding the horizons of crime readers with thrilling new discoveries in a familiar, trusted, and instantly recognisable green jacket. 

This summer, Penguin Modern Classics are thrilled to be reviving this beloved collection with our new Crime and Espionage series, celebrating the endless variety and enduring appeal of one of fiction’s great genres. Combining a careful selection of the very best from Penguin Classics’ extensive archives, including John le Carre, Josephine Tey, and Chester Himes, with exciting forgotten treasures which are well overdue a rediscovery, such as Edogawa Rampo and Davis Grubb, the first tranche of ten titles takes us from a sunshine soaked, yet bullet ridden California to a macabre Tokyo flat, through English country estates to the streets of Harlem. Transporting the reader through time and space, these novels can be outrageously entertaining but also chilling, filled with the darkest politics, vices, and betrayals.

The series, which will be released in ten-book tranches and continue to grow, is carefully curated by author and Penguin Press publishing director Simon Winder,  A long-time editor at Penguin and reader of crime, the revival of Penguin Crime and Espionage has seen Simon dig deep into the archives, reading hundreds of books to determine which of our existing titles should make the list, and which titles, previously not published by Penguin, should have been included years ago:

“Penguin Modern Classics is one of the great publishers of crime and suspense fiction.  I thought it would be enjoyable to pick out some highlights, add some new titles and revive the wonderful green livery Penguin used to use for all its crime fiction. 

These books are united by atmosphere, anxiety, a strong sense of time and place, and an often appalling ingenuity, both on behalf of the authors and their characters.  They have also all aged very well, gaining an additional pleasure from shifts in manners, clothes, wisecracks, politics, murder weapons and potential alibis.

The novels were designed to be entertainments, albeit sometimes of a very dark kind, and they all plumb extremes.  Fear of fascism or communism; fear of the anonymous city or of a fetid swamp; fear of vast global conspiracies or of just one rather odd family member with a glint in his eye….”

For lifelong crime lovers, who will no doubt be as excited as we are for the return of the bottle-green jackets as well as the previously unpublished titles, to new readers unsure where to start with the formidable back catalogues of Georges Simenon, Eric Ambler, or Len Deighton, the Penguin Crime and Espionage series is a collection of gems showcasing the best of the Golden Age of Crime.

2020 Hammett Prize Nominees

 

The International Association of Crime Writers, North America have announced the 2020 Hammett Nominees. 

The Hammett Prize is given for literary Excellence in Crime Writing. This is a distinguished award for a single book and is open to writers at any stage in their career

Congratulations to all the nominees.

The following books (in alphabetical order) have been selected for the short list:

In Old Bombay by Nev March (Minotaur) Based on a true story, in 1892 a soldier recovering from wounds investigates a murder.

The Mountains Wild by Sarah Stewart Taylor (Minotaur) - A New York detective revisits the disappearance of her cousin in Ireland two decades ago.

Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black (Soho)- In World War II, a young female sniper is sent to Paris to assassinate the Führer.

When These Mountains Burn by David Joy (Putnam) - A father in Appalachia confronts the opioid epidemic in an attempt to rescue his son.

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco) - Vigilante Virgil Wounded Horse investigates the spread of heroin on the reservation.

The 2020 reading committee, consisted of Christopher Chan, Marni Graff, Debbi Mack, and Chair J. Madison Davis 

The Hammett Prize

The 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing was announced by the International Association of Crime Writers. 

Bluff  by Jane Stanton Hitchcock, Poisoned Pen Press

Also Nominated:

The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols by Nicholas Meyer, St. Martin’s Press

Blood Relations by Jonathan Moore, Mariner Books

The Murals by William Bayer, Severn House 

Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History by Peter Houlahan, Counterpoint Press

The winner will be awarded the Hammett trophy, designed by artist Peter Boiger, depicting a falcon-headed figure based upon a celebrated photograph of Dashiell Hammett. The location of the presentation to be determined at a later time.

Calls for Chapters: Women Who Kill in English-speaking Cinema and TV Series of the Postfeminist Era

--> Within the fields of film and television studies, feminist critics and  scholars of the 1980s and 1990s have extensively analysed the figures  of women murderers in classical film genres like film noir and  melodrama, as well as in less savoury genres like the horror films of  the 1970s and 1980s. Such figures, often adapted from literary sources  (The Maltese Falcon, Leave Her to Heaven, Whatever Happened to Baby  Jane?, Tess of the D’Urbervilles), have existed since the silent era.  Yet what may have been an exception seems to be becoming more common.  Women who kill abound in contemporary films and TV shows, including  Butterfly Kiss (Michael Winterbottom, 1995), The Wire (HBO,  2002-2008), Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004), Monster (Patty  Jenkins, 2003), Lost (ABC, 2004-2010), Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama,  2009), Bathory (Juraj Jakubisko, 2008), Luther (BBC, 2010-), The  Hunger Games (2012-2015), The Americans (FX, 2013-), Orange Is the New  Black (Netflix, 2013-), Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013) and Gone  Girl (David Fincher, 2014). The increasing number of these characters  probably goes hand in hand with the increasing number of strong female  heroines. Far from displaying gratuitous violence by women, some of  these contemporary works justify or, at least try to explain, why the  murders happened in the first place (as an act of revenge, an answer  to their oppression, a way to fit in their environment, an expression  of their psychotic personalities, and so forth), while others tend to  question these very motives. Seeing as many of today’s producers,  filmmakers and screenwriters have gone through film school, it is more  than likely that many are aware of the theses developed in feminist  film and television studies; Diablo Cody, for instance, admitted  having Barbara Creed’s Monstrous-Feminine in mind when writing the  screenplay for Jennifer’s Body. The series and films are also, no  doubt, reacting to discourses that have been widely circulating in the  media, and that testify to the impact queer, gender and feminist  studies have had on popular culture at large. Another contemporary  phenomenon that must be taken into account is postfeminism, a  “market-led phenomenon” which, by promoting female success stories,  seems to “lead to the conclusion that the time for feminism is past”  (Gamble 42-44). These women who kill may simply be symptomatic of postfeminist trends.

--> This collected volume will explore several lines of inquiry: the female murderer as a figure that destabilises order; the tension between criminal and victim; the relationship between crime and expression (or the lack thereof); and the paradox whereby a crime can be both an act of destruction and a creative assertion of agency. It will also aim at assessing the influence of feminist, queer and gender studies on mainstream television and cinema, notably in the genres (film noir, horror, melodrama) that have received the most critical attention from this perspective, but more importantly perhaps, at analysing the politics of representation by considering these works of fiction in their contexts and addressing some of the ambiguities raised by postfeminism.

--> Proposals must include a 300-500-word abstract, a short bibliography and a bio, and should be sent to the editors by December 31, 2016:

Zachary Baqué: zachary.baque@univ-tlse2.fr

Cristelle Maury: cristellemaury@gmail.com

David Roche: mudrock@neuf.fr

Selected Bibliography

Andrin, Muriel. Maléfiques, le mélodrame filmique américain et ses héroines, 1940-1953, Bruxelles, Berne, Berlin: Peter Lang, 2005.

Birch, Helen, ed. Moving Targets Women Murder and Representation. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.

Burfoot and Lord, eds. Killing Women: The Visual Culture of Gender and  Violence. Waterloo: Wilfried Laurier, 2006.

Cadiet, Loïc, ed. Figures de femmes criminelles : De l'Antiquité à nos  jours. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010.

Cardi, Coline and Geneviève Pruvost, eds. Penser la violence des  femmes. Paris: La Découverte, 2012.

Clover, Carol. J. Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1992.

Cowie, Elizabeth. “Film Noir and Women.” Shades of Noir: a Reader. Ed.  Joan Copjec. London and New York: Verso, 1993. 121-65.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

---. Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005.

De Laurentis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.

Doane, Mary Ann. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.

Gamble, Sarah, ed. The Routledge Companion to Feminism and  Postfeminism. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

-->

Grant, Barry Keith, ed. The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Austin: U of Texas P, 1996.

Grossman, Julie. Rethinking the Femme Fatale: Ready For Her Close-Up.  London: Palgrave, 2009.

Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of  the Monster. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995.

---. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC and London: Duke UP, 1998.

Hanson, Helen. Hollywood Heroines Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film. London and New York: I. B. Tauris 2008.

Hanson Helen and Catherine O’Rawe. The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts. London: Palgrave, 2010.

Hildenbrand, Karen, ed. Cycnos 23.2 (2006) “Figures de femmes assassines, représentations et idéologies.”  <http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=618>.

Hooks, Bell. Real to Reel: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies. New York and London: Routledge, 2009 [1996].

Inness, Sherrie A. Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1998.

---, ed. Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Jones, Ann. Women Who Kill. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Kaplan E Ann, ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 1978.

Kuhn, Annette. Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. London and New York: Verso, 1993.

Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Nalepa, Laurie and Richard Pfefferman. The Murder Mystique: Female Killers and Popular Culture. Wesport, CO and London: Praeger, 2013.

Parker L. Juli, ed. Representations of Murderous Women in Literature,Theatre, Film and Television: Examining the Patriarchal Presuppositions Behind the Treatment of Murderesses in Fiction and  Reality. Lewinston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, 2010.

Plain, Gill. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and  the Body. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2001.

Rosalind, Gill. Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006.

Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, eds. New Femininities:Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. Basingstone, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Russo, Mary. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity. New York and London: Routledge, 1995.

Seal, Lizzie. Women, Murder and Femininity: Representations of Women Who Kill. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Stables, Kate. “The Postmodern Always Rings Twice: Constructing the Femme Fatale in 90s Cinema.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan.  London: BFI, 1998. 164-82.

Tasker Yvonne.  “Women in Film Noir.” A Companion to Film Noir. Ed. Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. 353-68.

---. Soldiers’ Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television Since World War II. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011.

Walker, Janet. “Hollywood, Freud and the Representation of Women: Regulations and Contradiction, 1945-early 60s.” Home is Where the Heart is, Studies in Melodrama and the Woman's Film. Ed. Christine  Gledhill. London: BFI, 1994. 197-214.

Wallace, Marilyn. Sisters in Crime. New York: Berkley Books, 1989.

Williams, Linda. “When the Woman Looks.” The Dread of Difference: Gender in the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 1996: 15-34.