The Heirs of Anthony Boucher Marvin Lachman

Early Mystery Fandom
3 The Mystery Lover’s/Reader’s
Newsletter (1967–1973)
Coincidentally, a second general-interest fan magazine appeared in the same month
as The Armchair Detective: October 1967. It actually appeared before TAD because a
prospectus issue was sent in August to potential subscribers answering a notice in
The Baker Street Journal. The Mystery Lover’s Newsletter (TMLN) was the creation of
Lianne Carlin of Revere, Massachusetts, then a stay-at-home mother of a two-year
old but anxious to use her journalism training. A mystery fan, she wondered why
there was no such magazine.
TMLN’s first issue had twelve pages. Two articles were reprints: a brief biography
of Alfred Hitchcock and the remainder of W. B. Stevenson’s chapbook, Detective Fiction,
the first part of which formed half of the prospectus. Mrs. Carlin’s husband,
Stanley, using the pseudonym “S. Carl Linn,” wrote an article “Detective Fiction and
Hemingway,” revealing Hemingway as a fan of Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon.
There was also publishing news, queries from readers, and a “Book Mart”
page for subscribers to list book wants and those they had for sale or trade.
Gradually, TMLN published more original material and attracted most of the same
cadre of fan-scholars as TAD; Robert Washer, Luther Norris, Robert Sampson, John
McAleer, and Bill Crider appeared first in TMLN. They wrote articles and checklists
about writers, including Ellery Queen, Ernest Bramah, Nick Carter, Anthony Gilbert,
Clayton Rawson, and Josephine Tey. Because some checklists contained errors
or were incomplete, TMLN’s readers used their considerable knowledge for corrections.
Charles Shibuk, a movie fan, adapted the annotated checklist, a common practice
in film scholarship, to the mystery with his list of Chandler on screen.
TMLN might have been strong on scholarship, but it wasn’t all solemn. Nevins
published his earliest writing about Harry Stephen Keeler, whom he called “the sublime
nutty genius of the crime genre,” as well as “Department of Unmitigated Mishmosh”
and “Department of Unrelated Miscellanea,” two running series about lighter
aspects of the mystery. I wrote a parody-pastiche in which the secretaries to famous
detectives, e.g., Della Street, Nikki Porter, et al, form a union and go out on strike. It
ended with Perry Mason forced to answer his own phone. I also wrote a parody play
about Arthur B. Reeve’s Craig Kennedy, a detective so popular in the 1910s he was
called “The American Sherlock Holmes.”
Not having as large a list of subscribers, nor the benefits of a Boucher review, as
did TAD, TMLN began more modestly. It grew larger but only reached twenty-two
pages at the end of its second year and never went beyond fifty-one pages. Carlin
changed its name to The Mystery Readers Newsletter (TMRN) in 1969 because she
found that a “smoother, more professional” title. Helped in part by a notice in Hubin’s
column in the New York Times Book Review and an ad in Ellery Queen’s Mystery
Magazine, TMRN eventually had about 500 subscribers.
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