‘Lost Detectives: Adapting Old Texts for New Media’ is a multi-strand and multi-stage Knowledge Exchange and Impact project which aims to bring works of nineteenth-century Russian crime fiction to greater public prominence through adaptation. It is a collaborative project between Dr Claire Whitehead at the University of St Andrews and author-illustrator Carol Adlam (caroladlam.co.uk). The project is kindly funded by the University of St Andrews’ Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund.
In September 2018, Claire Whitehead published The Poetics of Early Russian 1860-1917: Deciphering Stories
of Detection (Oxford: Legenda) as the culmination of more than a decade’s academic research. Crime fiction
enjoys huge popularity amongst readers in Russia today, but relatively little was known about its origins
in the second half of the nineteenth century. So, Claire set out to discover more about the roots of the
genre in Russia and discovered more than a dozen unknown and unrecognised authors who were writing great
works of crime fiction in the late Imperial era. The Poetics of Early Russian Crime Fiction looks at over
40 works of Russian crime fiction from the late Imperial era and focusses on the various ways in which they
utilise storytelling devices to construct and then resolve criminal plotlines.
See: Poetics of Early Russian Crime Fiction 1860-1917
However, because very few of the works that are discussed in the book have ever been translated into
English, Claire began to think about ways in which she could bring some of these works to a wider public
readership. During discussions about the design of a cover image for the book, Claire and the
author-illustrator, Carol Adlam, came up with the idea of thinking about how various forms of adaptation
might open up avenues for greater knowledge of these fascinating, but lost, works of crime fiction.
‘Lost Detectives’ currently has three stages of development.
Stage 1 involved the production of 10 pages of proof-of-concept artwork of Carol’s adaptation of Semyon Panov’s Three Courts, or Murder During the Ball from 1872. These pages were displayed in May / June 2019 in the cloisters area of St Salvator’s Chapel for the public to see with a launch event, featuring special guest, Val McDermid, on 22nd May 2019. Carol and Claire discussed the work involved in the adaptation of the Panov novel at a public event held on 23 rd April 2019, kindly sponsored by the University’s Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and East European Studies (CRSCEES). Carol has since used the proof-of-concept artwork to pitch her graphic novel adaptation of Panov, The Bobrov Affair, to publishers.
‘Lost Detectives’ was kindly awarded follow-on funding by the University of St Andrews Knowledge Exchange and Impact fund in October 2020. Stage 2 involves the adaptation of three further works of nineteenth-century Russian crime fiction. To date, Carol has adapted Nikolai Timofeev’s 1872 collection of stories, Notes of an Investigator, into an audio play entitled Today in 1864, based on BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programme. Carol also worked on a second adaptation of the same Timofeev work as a musical libretto, entitled Spade and Sand. The second Russian work adapted was Aleksandr Shkliarevskii’s 1881 story A Secret Investigation which Carol has transformed into a wonderfully inventive radio play script, entitled Curare after the poison used in the murders. Finally, Carol is in the very early stages of thinking about the best form in which to adapt The Song Has Been Sung, an 1892 novel by the only Russian woman to write crime fiction during this period, Aleksandra Sokolova. You can listen to us discuss our experiences of adaptation in the second stage of the project in Episodes 3 and 4 of our podcast series, and about Carol’s plans to bring these to a wider audience.
In early 2020, the St Andrews Knowledge Exchange and Impact fund very kindly agreed to support Carol’s production of a full 100-page graphic novel of The Bobrov Affair. She is currently preparing the artwork with a view to completing it by the end of 2021.
Reader, Department of Russian
University of St Andrews
Author of The Poetics of Early Russian Crime Fiction 1860-1917: Deciphering Stories of Detection (Legenda, 2018)
cew12@st-andrews.ac.uk
Twitter: @cewhitehead72
Simon is author of A Theory of Narrative Drawing (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) and Dispossession (one of The Guardian Books of the Year 2015), a graphic adaptation of a novel by Anthony Trollope (Jonathan Cape and Les Impressions Nouvelles 2015). He is co-author, with Roger Sabin and Julian Waite, of Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (Manchester University Press 2019), Marie Duval (Myriad 2018) and The Marie Duval Archive and co-editor, with Laurence Grove, of Transforming Anthony Trollope: 'Dispossession', Victorianism and 19th century word and image (Leuven University Press 2015). Since 1990, he has been half of international artists team Grennan & Sperandio, producer of over forty comics and books. For further information please see: www.simongrennan.com.
Dubbed the Queen of Crime, Val McDermid has sold over 17 million books to date across the globe and is translated into more than 40 languages. She is perhaps best-known for her Wire in the Blood series, featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, which was adapted for television starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris. She has written three other series: private detective Kate Brannigan, journalist Lindsay Gordon and, most recently, cold case detective Karen Pirie, whose debut appearance in The Distant Echo is soon to become a major ITV series. She has also published several award- winning standalone novels, books of non-fiction, short story collections and a children’s picture book, My Granny is a Pirate. For further information please see: www.valmcdermid.com.
The Lost Detectives Podcast is hosted by Dr Claire Whitehead with contributing guest Carol Adlam. In it we discuss adaptations of nineteenth-century literary works into different media including stage, audio, and graphic novel. If you have any comments or suggestions please get in touch [cew12@st-andrews.ac.uk].
Episode One: Dr Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam discuss the adaptation of two
novels first published in 1872: Semyon Panov's novel Tri suda ili ubiistvo vo vremia bala
[Three Courts, or Murder During the Ball], which Adlam has adapted in graphic novel form as The Bobrov Affair,
and Nikolai Timofeev's Zapiski sledovatelia [Notes of an Investigator], adapted by Adlam as an audio play entitled
Today in 1864, and as Spade and Sand, a verse drama. Recorded in St Andrews, 12/12/2019, with Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam.
Readings by: Victoria Donovan, Emily Finer, Jesse Gardiner, Margarita Vaysman, Mikhail Vodopyanov, & Claire Whitehead.
A transcript of the podcast is available here [download].
Episode Two: Carol Adlam interviews Dr Simon Grennan, visual artist and specialist in graphic novels,
adaptation, and intermediality. Simon and Carol discuss Simon’s graphic novel Dispossession: A Novel in Few Words (Jonathan Cape and Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2015),
an adaptation of Antony Trollope’s John Caldigate, first published in 1877. Topics covered include intermedial adaptation; finding visual analogues to literary texts;
Australia in nineteenth-century literature; twentieth-century movie time and point of view; and comics theory. The podcast also provides an update on the Lost Detectives
project with Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam, with news of developments on the graphic novel project and the script adaptations. Recorded in Chester, Nottingham and St Andrews,
February-May 2020.
A transcript of the podcast is available here. [download].
Episode Three: Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam discuss Adlam’s audio play Curare,
inspired by the Russian crime novel Sekretnoe sledstvie [A Secret Investigation, 1876], by Aleksandr Shkliarevskii. Topics discussed include transmedia adaptation,
narrative structure and voice, women’s education and medical training in the reform period (1860s-1870s), the use of curare in anaesthesia, the rise of the animal
rights movement, and the use of photography in early forensic science. Recorded in Nottingham and St Andrews, September 2020.
A transcript of the podcast is available here. [download].
Episode Four: This episode is a recording of a Byre World ‘In Conversation…’ event that took place on
11 November 2020 and was kindly sponsored by the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews. In it, Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam discuss ongoing
progress on their ‘Lost Detectives’ project, including Carol’s thoughts on principles of adaptation she has developed through her work with nineteenth-century Russian
crime fiction and how she handles the problematic trope of the woman driven to murder out of jealousy in her adaptation of Semyon Panov’s Three Courts, or Murder
During the Ball (1876). The episode also includes excerpts of a recording of Carol’s adaptation of Nikolai Timofeev’s Notes of an Investigator (1872) into a radio
play, Today in 1864, based on BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programme as well as examples of her use of the technique of interleaved voices in her adaptation of
Aleksandr Shkliarevskii’s story A Secret Investigation from 1876. Our discussion ends with Carol demonstrating a new technique she has developed, which she is
calling ‘fugitive printing’, and which she plans to employ in her adaptation of Three Courts into a graphic novel.
A transcript of the podcast will be available shortly.
Episode Five: Dr Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam interview bestselling and award-winning crime writer,
Val McDermid, about her various experiences of adaptation. Their conversation covers Val’s very first novel which, although never published, was adapted into a stage
play; the radio adaptations of her Kate Brannigan novel Clean Break; the ITV series Wire in the Blood and the mini-series A Place of Execution by Coastal Productions.
They also chat about the TV series Traces, set in a sunny Dundee and her collaboration with the artist Kathryn Briggs on the forthcoming graphic novel, Resistance, due
for publication in May 2021 and which is based on Val’s original BBC radio play from 2017. Val is also kind enough to share her insights into crime fiction’s potential
for adaptation, the filming of the first of her Karen Pirie novels, A Distant Echo, in Fife and her favourite foreign crime writers and TV series.
A transcript of the podcast is available here. [download].
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