Since 2004 Claire Whitehead has investigated the ‘lost’ history of imperial Russian crime fiction, presenting her work in articles and in her monograph The Poetics of Early Russian Crime Fiction, 1860-1917 (Oxford: MHRA; Legenda, 2018). This book discusses works by little-known authors such as Nikolai Sokolovskii, Petr Stepanov, Nikolai Timofeev, Semyon Panov, Aleksandr Shkliarevskii and Andrei Zarin as well as offering new readings of Dostoevskii and Chekhov. For more information on these and other authors, see historical contexts.
The idea for the Lost Detectives project emerged out of discussions between Whitehead and author-illustrator Carol Adlam (herself a former Russianist), who created the cover of the monograph, about how this historically significant body of literature might be brought to the wider attention of generalist English-speaking audiences.
Project Timeline
Stage 1 (Spring-Summer 2019)
Exhibition: Three Courts, or Murder During the Ball
Stage 1 involved the production of 10 pages of proof-of-concept artwork of Adlam’s adaptation of Semyon Panov’s 1876 novella, Tri suda, ili ubiistvo vo vremia bala (Three Courts, or Murder During the Ball). These pages were displayed in May / June 2019 in the cloisters area of St Salvator’s Chapel, with accompanying talks.
Stage 2 (Autumn 2019-Spring 2020)
Audio scripts: Today in 1864; Spade and Sand; Curare
For Stage 2 Adlam produced three audio adaptations. Today in 1864 is a script for a 45-minute audio drama; it uses the ‘live’ format of the BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programme to dramatise the stories collected in Nikolai Timofeev’s Notes of an Investigator (1872). Spade and Sand is a libretto response to one of the stories in Timofeev’s collection, entitled ‘Murder and Suicide’. Curare adapts Aleksandr Shkliarevskii’s A Secret Investigation (1881).
Stage 3 (Autumn 2021-Spring 2023)
Graphic novel: The Russian Detective
In Stage 3 Adlam wrote and illustrated a full-length graphic novel, The Russian Detective. This is loosely inspired by Panov’s Three Courts, which sits inside an original story by Adlam that responds to the genre of early Russian crime fiction as a whole. The Russian Detective introduces Charlotta Ivanovna (Charlie Fox) – a liar, magician, trickster and thief. The Russian Detective was published by Jonathan Cape / Viking (Penguin Random House) in 2024, and was named as one of The Guardian’s Best Books / Best Graphic Novels of 2024. In 2025 it will be published in Portuguese by publisher Leya.
Stage 4 (Autumn 2024)
Networking Event: Lost Detectives and Beyond
In November 2024 Adlam and Whitehead convened an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional networking event, bringing together specialists from the creative arts (game design, illustration, immersive experience, crime fiction, visual storytelling, VR and XR) with experts in forensic science, social geography, gender studies and women’s history, literary history, and audience engagement, to discuss ideas for future developments of a large crossmedia project using the Lost Detectives project as a springboard. For updates on continuing and future plans, sign up via news.
Summary of outputs
The Lost Detectives project generated outputs on the subjects of literary history, women’s writing, crime fiction, visual and audio adaptation, and graphic novel adaptation. These are: 5 creative works (3 audio scripts; 1 exhibition, 1 graphic novel); 6 peer-reviewed articles on the subjects of literary history, women’s writing, crime fiction, text to graphic and audio adaptation; a podcast (6 episodes); a networking event (see below), and 18 specialist and public talks, presentations, and other events.