Andrew Spicer - European Film Noir

I had high expectations from European Film Noir by Andrew Spicer, hoping for a broad and illuminating exploration of noir across the continent. Instead, the book mostly confirmed something I was already aware of: outside France, the European noir landscape is relatively limited.

The chapters on Germany, Spain, and Italy underline how few fully realized noir films emerged from those countries. While this may be historically accurate, it makes the study feel somewhat thin. The section on French noir is solid, but for anyone already familiar with the major films and critical discussions, it offers little that feels new or revelatory.

Another drawback is the book’s visual presentation. For a study devoted to a highly stylized cinematic form, it contains surprisingly few photographs. The overall design is rather plain and unattractive, which is disappointing in a book about a visually driven genre.

In the end, European Film Noir works better as an introductory academic survey than as a visually rich or groundbreaking reassessment of the genre. For readers already immersed in noir history, it may feel more dutiful than exciting.

Amanda Cross - Death In A Tenured Position

Death in a Tenured Position is a crime novel written by Amanda Cross, the pseudonym of literature professor Carolyn Heilbrun.

The novel tells the story of the first woman to receive a tenured position at a formerly all-male college. Instead of triumph, she is met with indifference, passive aggression, and institutional coldness. The mystery element is present, but atmosphere dominates — a pervasive sense of isolation, academic vanity, and quiet cruelty. In the end, it is revealed that her death was not a murder but a suicide, which casts the entire narrative in a darker and more unsettling light.

Heilbrun herself was a distinguished scholar and feminist critic who taught for many years at Columbia University. Throughout her academic career, she spoke openly about the subtle and overt discrimination women faced within universities, particularly in elite institutions that were slow to accept women as intellectual equals. Under the name Amanda Cross, she used detective fiction not only as entertainment but as a vehicle to explore gender politics, professional exclusion, and the emotional cost of institutional resistance.

Late in life, Heilbrun chose to end her own life at the age of seventy-seven. While it would be simplistic to read the novel as autobiographical, the themes of isolation, aging, autonomy, and the pressures placed upon accomplished women inevitably resonate more strongly in light of her personal history.