The Lost Detectives Podcast

Claire Whitehead talks to Dr Grace Docherty about the depiction of non-human things in early Russian crime fiction, including the role of poison in works by two female crime writers.

Lost Detectives is back! in this episode, Dr. Claire Whitehead sits down with Maitrayee Roychoudhury, an Assistant Professor at the University of Delhi and PhD researcher at St Andrews. Together, they discuss the fascinating and often overlooked figure of the female detective in 19th-century literature, moving beyond the traditional Western canon to explore crime fiction from the Bengal region. Ke...

In this episode of the series, Dr. Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam are joined by Dr. Mona Bozdog, a specialist in immersive experience design at the University of Abertay. Together, they explore the cutting edge of adaptation, looking at how stories move beyond the page into the physical world through video games and performance. Key topics include: Hybrid Storytelling: The convergence of contemp...

In this special episode, Dr. Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam are joined by bestselling and award-winning crime writer, Val McDermid. Together, they discuss McDermid's extensive experience seeing her work transformed across different media—from stage and radio to major television series. The conversation offers a fascinating look at how crime fiction evolves when it moves from the page to the...

This episode features a recording of a special Byre World ‘In Conversation…’ event, sponsored by the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews. Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam discuss the ongoing progress of the ‘Lost Detectives’ project, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the ethical and creative challenges of bringing 19th-century Russian crime fiction to a modern audience. K...

In this episode, Dr. Claire Whitehead and Carol Adlam explore the dark intersection of medicine, crime, and ethics in 19th-century Russia. They discuss Adlam’s audio play, Curare , which is inspired by Aleksandr Shkliarevskii’s 1881 crime novel Sekretnoe sledstvie (A Secret Investigation). From narrative craft to the history of science, the conversation unpacks the social realities behind the fict...

In this episode, Carol Adlam interviews visual artist and graphic novel specialist Dr. Simon Grennan. Together, they discuss Simon’s unique graphic novel, Dispossession: A Novel in Few Words (2015)—a visual adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s 1877 classic, John Caldigate . The conversation bridges the gap between Victorian literature and modern comics theory, exploring how text is transformed into im...

Join Dr. Claire Whitehead and artist Carol Adlam as they journey back to 1872 to resurrect two "lost" classics of Imperial Russian crime fiction. Recorded at the University of St Andrews, this episode explores the creative challenges of transforming 19th-century text into modern visual and audio drama. In this episode, we discuss: The Bobrov Affair: Adlam’s graphic novel adaptation of Se...