Q & A Blog Series - Professor Emerita Linda Ledford-Miller

The second contributor to the ICFA Q & A series is Professor Emerita Linda Ledford-Miller!

​Dr. Ledford-Miller recently retired from teaching and committees, but not from academic endeavours. She continues to work across cultures and continents according to where her interests take her. She has published widely on Travel Writing and American Minority writers. Her recent work focuses on Crime Fiction, including Robert Downey Jr.’s interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, gender roles in the In Death series by the American J.D. Robb, the village mysteries of the Canadian Louise Penny, the philosophical Inspector Espinosa series by the Brazilian Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza, and the stand alone crime novel by the Mexican Laura Esquivel, best known for the smashing success of her first novel, Like Water for Chocolate (1989).

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1. What first sparked your interest in crime fiction studies?

As an academic, my field was Literature of the Americas—Brazil, Spanish America, and the United States. I taught for thirty-three years at the University of Scranton, one of the twenty-eight Jesuit universities in the United States. The position allowed me to teach in three languages: Brazilian Portuguese, language and culture, Spanish language and Spanish American literature and culture, and literature of American minorities in English. Being a fairly small university, I taught as a generalist to undergraduates. I did manage some courses beyond the surveys: Hispanic Women Writers, Travel Writing on Latin America, and even an occasional course on detective fiction, beginning with setting the scene for genre parameters: the cozy and the puzzle, the British tradition and the American hard boiled, the iconic stories of Poe and Jorge Luis Borges (detective fiction or philosophy?), Gabriel Garcia Marquez Chronicle of a Death Foretold's and so on, controlled for undergraduates and often non-majors.

As for my own reading, I believe I began with Dorothy Sayers eons ago, and Elmore Leonard. 

2. What have you been reading, watching, or listening to recently? Do you notice any new emergent trends?

Recent reading: 

Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders, the first in one is planned as a new series, though the also promises that he has not left behind the charming retirees of The Thursday Murder Club series, of which there are four. And The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, a diabolically clever mystery. I’m waiting for my library copy on hold of The Sequel, which is, you guessed it, a sequel to The Plot by the same author. Also The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny, and Passions in Death by J. D. Robb. 

Watching:

I watch primarily crime and detective fiction series from the UK and Commonwealth countries, along with Nordic, French, and Italian series, etc. Acorn, Britbox, MhZ, PBS Master piece.  Vera, Annika, The Brokenwood Mysteries, My Life is Murder, Astrid et Raphaelle.

As for emerging trends: more detectives of color, many more women detectives (but not necessarily less racism or misogyny).

3. Which book(s) do you find yourself returning to most often?

I don’t tend to return to books, but rather authors. The Grey Wolf, for example, is the nineteenth in Louise Penny’s series set always at least partially in the charming village of Three Pines in the countryside near Montreal. J.D. Robb’s latest is her 59th in the In Death series, and I’ve read them all. Also all of Donna Leon’s series set in Venice. And I seek out minority writers like S. A. Crosby and Attica Locke, African American mystery writers with a deep regard for setting. Or Winter Counts by Native American writer David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

4. What is your best piece of advice for emerging scholars in the field?

Make an effort to keep up with current scholarship, particularly as it relates to your interests. As a reader for the ICFA Annual Book Prize, I can say that there is a great deal of work is being done. For the 2023 competition we have twenty-three entries!  And enjoy the journey.

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