Published on:19th November 2024
What do an ape, some children, a ghost, a thief and Tarzan have in common? In one way or another they have all been unexpected allies to either a professional or amateur sleuth in classic crime fiction. They are unexpected because they are often seen as unlikely candidates for offering support. For example, why would someone who works against law suddenly decide to start helping it? We may also ...
Published on:14th December 2022
At this time of year, it is of course, as Hercule Poirot would suggest, de rigueur to offer some little token of affection in the spirit of the Christmas Season. Given the immense exertion that my characters endure on my behalf ...
Published on:15th August 2022
I started reading detective fiction very young, in the early 1970s when, other than what was available at home (Conan Doyle, Christie, Sayers), ...
Published on:23rd June 2022
It was June 2, 2022 in London, England and I invited myself to celebrate 70 years on the job for two very famous ladies. One, the Queen of England, Her Majesty Elizabeth II, who as Time ...
Published on:18th May 2022
By Suzanne Meyers
A full moon, a lunar eclipse and a bevy of stars made for, dare I say, a celestial evening at the Metropolitan Opera House for the New York City premiere ...
Published on:15th May 2022
By Suzanne Meyers
Is there a more expedient formula for self awareness than personal taste and style? My own was jump-started by a move. Arriving from Akron, Ohio to my new high school in small town Virginia, I made the egregious error of being enthusiastic about Romeo ...
Published on:5th April 2022
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Last month, Dean Street Press director, Rupert, and his wife (the fashion historian and YouTuber Amanda Hallay) walked – or rather, sailed – in Agatha Christie’s footsteps as they voyaged up The Nile on the legendary S.S. Sudan. This was the vessel that Agatha ...
Published on:17th January 2022
For those who enjoy murder mystery drama of the cosier variety—we salute you. And few new series of that ilk have been so welcome in recent years as the Emmy-nominated Queens of Mystery, now in its second ...
Published on:28th September 2021
In the 84 years since Julia Jean Turner became Lana Turner, much has been written about this actress from Idaho. Lana had commanded attention from the very moment ...
Published on:20th July 2021
There is a term used to describe such places as the island of Iona, off Mull, on the West Coast of Scotland, where the transcendent and material worlds come so close they are barely separate; the word is ‘thin’. Anyone who has visited ...
Published on:21st May 2021
‘Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy the Novelist; Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur’ – so runs journalist Ben Macintyre’s attempt to anatomize the baffling and ...
Published on:24th April 2021
An amateur sleuth, usually a woman; a quirky supporting cast; a small, tight-knit community; and a typically gore-less murder – the ‘cosy mystery’ is a genre with a long history (think Miss Marple), ...
Published on:25th February 2021
During WWII, German planes dropped 32,000 tonnes of bombs on British cities, an eighth-month-long assault known as the Blitz. It is a period well known to us – not only familiar ground in most school history lessons but recent enough that many who experienced ...
Published on:11th January 2021
This New Year feels different to most; the passing of time was not marked with its usual, glorious bang, but rather quietly celebrated from the sofas of homes across the world. Many of us find ourselves in the same circumstances as we have been for the last ten months, and it can be hard ...
Published on:8th December 2020
Nothing makes for a cozier Christmas evening than snuggling in front of the fire (festive lights twinkling, mulled wine at hand) and reading of the grisly murder of a 1930s socialite. Or so says fashion historian and YouTube presenter Prof. Amanda ...
Published on:28th October 2020
With the 1997 British miniseries based upon Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 Neo-Gothic novel Rebecca, the world wondered why it needed a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 classic. As near to perfect a movie of its genre can get, Hitchcock’s version saw Laurence Olivier ...
Published on:15th August 2020
In times of crisis, dreams flourish to keep the spirits fired. So, during the years of World War II. In A House in the Country, four men and two women, tired of blackouts, powdered eggs and cramped air raid shelters, ...
Published on:23rd June 2020
A common, and usually critical, stereotype of middlebrow fiction is its tendency for happy endings. In the quintessential mid-century middlebrow novel, conflicts are neatly resolved (often with a marriage or reconciliation), leaving the world of the text pleasantly at peace. Critiques of middlebrow ...
Published on:26th May 2020
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Difficult as it is to think of World War II as anything other than vile, Erik Larson, in his new historical biography The Splendid and the Vile, wonderfully reminds us that even in the most dire of situations, splendid acts of courage, leadership and national unity will eventually ...
Published on:16th April 2020
We are living in difficult times. In the face of the global coronavirus pandemic, our everyday lives have been unimaginably disrupted. Over the last few weeks, comparisons between our current situation and that of those living through the Blitz have floated around ...
Published on:16th March 2020
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Veronica Lake, movie star, was a tiny but luminous beacon of sexiness and sass who shined bright and cool during the dark days of World War II. Barely out of her teens, she became an icon of mid-20th century America. Women emulated her spunk and style and that famous come-hither ...
Published on:23rd January 2020
Some notes for a talk to members of The Book Trade and other Businessmen and women in Glasgow. It was arranged by Messrs Collins and given in their premises in Cathedral Street. They enjoyed the jokes but very few of them had any useful suggestions to offer. However, Messrs Collins ...
Published on:31st December 2019
Although we are perhaps best known for our Golden Age Crime Fiction and Furrowed Middlebrow titles (female British authors of the early-to-mid 20th Century), our Hollywood Collection is both dear to our hearts and ever ...
Published on:13th December 2019
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas here at the cozy offices of Dean Street Press; the halls are decked, the gifts are wrapped, our epic vintage holiday music playlist has us humming along to Bing Crosby, and each day concludes ...
Published on:18th November 2019
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Anthromorphism (the attribution of human characteristic to animals or objects) has been around forever, yet it was in the 1930s—with its Great Depression need for whimsy – that this bizarre predilection peaked. As Dean Street Press publishes ...
Published on:8th November 2019
The Dean Street Press ‘Hollywood Collection’ (biographies and autobiographies of Golden Age Hollywood stars) certainly came to mind during this week’s trip to Los Angeles and a visit to the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary. Nestled peacefully in the Westwood region of the city, the cemetary (that has undergone several name changes over ...
Published on:28th October 2019
It seems as if we have all been lords and ladies in waiting over the past two years, with Netflix always teasing, yet never committing, to a release date for the third season of its much acclaimed and soapy saga of Elizabeth ...
Published on:7th October 2019
This month, we admit to feeling a little bit chuffed here at Dean Street Press. Fans of detective fiction know only too well the frustration that comes with discovering a Golden Age Mystery author, and then the seeming impossibility of finding his or her books, ...
Published on:7th October 2019
With the launch of our new look website came a renewed interest in the history of colour. Of course, we wanted the look of the site to be 'web contemporary', but we also wanted to evoke the palette of the past and to speak to our book jackets. Designed in-house, one of the aspects of our cover art that I personally enjoy the most is the authentic palette. Whether a book was originally ...