FFB: The Other Passenger - John Keir Cross, illus. Bruce Angrave

This post was promised several years ago and got lost in my Drafts folder.  With the recent reissue of The Other Passenger by Valancourt Books I thought I ought to finish up and unveil these striking works of surrealistic art that appeared in the original UK edition of John Keir Cross' collection of macabre short stories.  The artist is Bruce Angrave.  The Other Passenger was originally published by John Westhouse (publishers) Ltd. in 1944 and cost a whopping £12, 6p, almost twice the usual 7/6 for a regular hardback at that time. And what a gorgeous book it is.

The paintings -- starting with the one at left and going in order to the bottom of the post -- illustrate the following stories:

"Couleur de Rose," "The Glass Eye," "The Last of the Romantics," "Hands," "Miss Thing and the Surrealists," "Music When Soft Voices Die...","The Other Passenger"

To see a variety of Bruce Angrave's illustration art click here.  Scroll down to the list of categories and click on the black boxes on the left to see his art work. A brief sketch on the life and work of John Keir Cross is included in an especially commissioned introduction I wrote for the new edition of The Other Passenger reissued by Valancourt Books.

Murder in the Closet Nominated for Edgar!

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

I was so excited to read this afternoon that Murder in the Closet: Essays on Queer Clues in Crime Fiction before Stonewall (McFarland, 2016) has been nominated for an Edgar in the category Best Critical/Biographical Work.

Congratulations to Curt Evans who has been long overdue for recognition for his critical writing on the history of detective fiction, its developments and the lives of many under-appreciated and forgotten crime writers. Curt created the concept for Murder in the Closet and recruited over twenty writers from both international academia and the blogosphere. I was one of those contributors and delivered four essays, three of which made it to the final book. The final product is what I consider to be a landmark anthology of critical essays covering the treatment of LGBTQ themes in Golden Age detective fiction as well as discussing the lives of many gay and lesbian mystery writers like Hugh Wheeler & Richard Webb, Beverley Nichols, Patricia Highsmith, Nancy Spain and George Baxt.

I'm so proud to be part of this book and that Murder in the Closet has been recognized by the Mystery Writers of America. A more detailed post about the book, its contents, and its origin appears on our esteemed editor's blog The Passing Tramp.