Lost detectives: intermedial adaptations of nineteenth-century Russian crime fiction. A conversation

Abstract

Abstract This conversation took place over three recorded sessions between Carol Adlam and Claire Whitehead in St Andrews and Nottingham between April and May 2023, to mark the culmination of the first four-year stage of a multi-media crime fiction-adaptation project, ‘Lost Detectives: Adapting Old Texts for New Media’ (funded by the University of St Andrews’ Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund, led by Whitehead). Bringing together Whitehead’s research specialism in early Russian crime fiction and Adlam’s expertise in visual and textual adaptation, the aim of the Lost Detectives project is to draw on a large body of neglected works of early Russian crime fiction (1860–1917) as a corrective to the prevailing, canonical understanding of Russian literary culture, contributing deep historical perspective to the new and unfolding public socio-cultural and political discourse around ways in which Russian culture may take a proportionate place in our shared human legacy. From 2019 to 2023 Adlam made five cross-media adaptations, as follows: (1) The Bobrov Affair (2019): exhibition and proof-of-concept graphic material adapting Semyon Panov’s novella Tri suda, ili ubiistvo vo vremia bala (Three Courts, or Murder During the Ball; 1876); (2) ‘Spade and Sand’ (2019): libretto adaptation of Nikolai Timofeev’s short story ‘Ubiistvo i samoubiistvo’ (Murder and Suicide; 1872); (3) Today in 1864 (2020): 45-minute audio-drama adaptation of Nikolai Timofeev’s Zapiski sledovatelia (Notes of an Investigator; 1872); (4) Curare (2021): 45-minute audio-drama adaptation of Aleksandr Shkliarevskii’s ‘Sekretnoe sledstvie’ (A Secret Investigation; 1881); and (5) The Russian Detective, a 120-pp. graphic novel (Jonathan Cape, 2024). An eponymous podcast documents the project. The discussion has been edited for clarity.