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Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Born

in The United States

January 01, 1943

Genre

Mystery, Nonfiction

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Francis Michael Nevins, Jr. aka Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Francis Nevins’ areas of expertise straddle the worlds of fact and fiction.

When he created the seminar on “Law, Lawyers and Justice in Popular Fiction and Film” in 1979, it was considered a novel idea. Today, similar seminars and courses commonly are offered in law schools throughout the United States and abroad. If there is a conference on law and film almost anywhere in the world, chances are good that Professor Nevins will be invited as a guest speaker. His paper, “When Celluloid Lawyers Started to Speak: Exploring Juriscinema’s First Golden Age,” presented in 2003 at a University College colloquium in London, is scheduled to appear in a book of essays on law and popular culture publi Francis Michael Nevins, Jr. aka Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Francis Nevins’ areas of expertise straddle the worlds of fact and fiction.

When he created the seminar on “Law, Lawyers and Justice in Popular Fiction and Film” in 1979, it was considered a novel idea. Today, similar seminars and courses commonly are offered in law schools throughout the United States and abroad. If there is a conference on law and film almost anywhere in the world, chances are good that Professor Nevins will be invited as a guest speaker. His paper, “When Celluloid Lawyers Started to Speak: Exploring Juriscinema’s First Golden Age,” presented in 2003 at a University College colloquium in London, is scheduled to appear in a book of essays on law and popular culture published by Oxford University Press.

An expert in estate and copyright law, Nevins was one of the first to explore in depth the legal problems that arise when an author dies. He coined the term “will bumping” to describe how, in certain circumstances, the Copyright Act can “turn an author’s will into a worthless piece of paper.” A famous writer to whom this happened was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie books. Professor Nevins served as a consultant in a federal lawsuit aimed at “unbumping” her will.

Nevins has also written about the interface between copyright and matrimonial law and has argued that a little-known provision of the Copyright Act precludes state courts from treating copyrights as matrimonial or community property when an author divorces. “It’s interesting to see courts squirming all over the place to avoid the plain language of the Copyright Act,” he says. He is currently involved in a case that raises the issue of whether upon the divorce of a successor to an author, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution precludes state courts from treating as matrimonial or community property the termination interest granted by the Copyright Act to authors’ successors.

In addition to his scholarly writing, Professor Nevins is an award-winning author of mystery fiction. His mentor in this field and “the closest thing to a grandfather I’ve ever had” was Frederic Dannay, whose pen name was Ellery Queen. Professor Nevins has published six novels, two collections of short stories and several books of non-fiction. He has edited more than 15 mystery anthologies and collections. His latest book of fiction is titled Leap Day and Other Stories (2003).

Professor Nevins graduated cum laude from New York University School of Law in 1967. He is a member of the New Jersey Bar, and worked as a staff attorney with the state’s Middlesex County Legal Services Corp. before joining the School of Law in 1971. ...more

Combine Editions
Francis M. Nevins Jr.’s books

Average rating: 3.89 · 796 ratings · 123 reviews · 62 distinct works • Similar authors

	Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die 3.89 avg rating — 45 ratings — published 1988 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection: The story of how two fractious cousins reshaped the modern detective novel. 4.08 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2013 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hitchcock in Prime Time: 20 Chilling Tales of Suspense from the Number One Mystery Show of Television's Golden Age by Francis M. Nevins Jr. (Editor), Martin H. Greenberg (Editor), Henry Slesar (Introduction) 3.79 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 1985 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Publish and Perish (Loren Mensing #1) 3.07 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 1975 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Royal Bloodline; Ellery Queen, Author and Detective 4.13 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1973 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary 1942-47 4.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2009 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Sound of Detection: Ellery Queen's Adventures in Radio by Francis M. Nevins Jr., Martin Grams Jr., Larry Dobkin (Foreword by) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1983 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The 120 Hour Clock 3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1986 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Into the Same River Twice 2.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1996 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cornucopia of Crime by Francis M. Nevins Jr., Fender Tucker, Gavin L. O'Keefe 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2010 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Francis M. Nevins Jr.…

Series by Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Loren Mensing (4 books)
by

Francis M. Nevins Jr.

2.86 avg rating — 22 ratings

Milo Turner (2 books)
by

Francis M. Nevins Jr.

3.83 avg rating — 6 ratings

Quotes by Francis M. Nevins Jr. (?)

“The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division.

("Introduction")”
― Francis M. Nevins, Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich

tags: character, cornell-woolrich, crime-fiction, fiction-writing, noir, noir-fiction, short-fiction, writer, writers, writing

5 likes

“Woolrich had a genius for creating types of story perfectly consonant with his world: the noir cop story, the clock race story, the waking nightmare, the oscillation thriller, the headlong through the night story, the annihilation story, the last hours story. These situations, and variations on them, and others like them, are paradigms of our position in the world as Woolrich sees it. His mastery of suspense, his genius (like that of his spiritual brother Alfred Hitchcock) for keeping us on the edge of our seats and gasping with fright, stems not only from the nightmarish situations he conjured up but from his prose, which is compulsively readable, cinematically vivid, high-strung almost to the point of hysteria, forcing us into the skins of the hunted and doomed where we live their agonies and die with them a thousand small deaths.”
― Francis M. Nevins, Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich

tags: alfred-hitchcock, cornell-woolrich, doomed, hunted, hysteria, nightmarish, stories, story, storytelling, suspense, writers, writing

2 likes

“But suspense presupposes uncertainty. No matter how nightmarish the situation, real suspense is impossible when we know in advance that the protagonist will prevail (as we would if Woolrich had used series characters) or will be destroyed. This is why, despite his congenital pessimism, Woolrich manages any number of times to squeeze out an upbeat resolution. Precisely because we can never know whether a particular novel or story will be light or dark, allegre or noir, his work remains hauntingly suspenseful.

("Introduction")”
― Francis M. Nevins, Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich

tags: cornell-woolrich, noir, noir-fiction, suspense

2 likes

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