Once more the clew crew at Jeopardy! dips into the deep trough of the life and career of Dashiell Hammett to summon up hard-boiled ghosts of the past.
Seas42 Ep124. February 26, 2026. First round. $400 clew.
Category: First Lines of Literature.
Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.
One contestant jumps on it. Buzzes in. Says — you can hear confidence in his voice — “What is The Big Sleep?”
Once again, the typical problem. The inherent confusion between the two masters to emerge from Black Mask magazine. Hammett. And Raymond Chandler. Even among people who make the cut for Jeopardy! it occurs in half the possible cases. One or the other.
Nanoseconds drip past as the poor guy waits for the verdict from host Ken Jennings, so he can jump to the next square. The suspense is almost Hitchcockian.
“No,” Ken says.
Next contestant buzzes in. “What is The Maltese Falcon?”
Brian Leno has decided to throw his collection of postcards promoting August Derleth and his home in Sauk City, Wisconsin onto the market. Search eBay for “August Derleth Signed Postcards” — though I guess technically only one card is signed.
InArkham House Ephemera: The Classic Yearswe mention this set of postcards in an aside. Certainly ephemera, but just a shade away from the materials we designate as our subject matter of promotional Arkham House Stock Lists, Booklets, Brochures, Letters and even Postcards — but the cards that make the cut actually advertise Arkham House books.
These cards create some atmosphere on the side. For prospective buyers at least Derleth uses the back of one to report on an Arkham order to one of his customers.
“I probably meant ‘too many examples of almost the same item’ — the most unattractive items in our otherwise beautifully illustrated book.
“So plain and inconsequential. . . .
“In fact, they would probably deter rather than entice collectors. . . .
“Yeah. I guess ‘ugly’ works.”
And a landmark moment in the history of Eph Book came recently, when in his sales catalog L. W. Currey began using it as a source, even citing info therefrom — as in the inscription by Donald Wandrei to Dennis Rickard.
Incidentally, that bit of info about the inscription to Dennis got lost for over twenty years. It appeared in my original draft for an article on collecting the ephemera for Firsts: The Book Collectors Magazine. But it was one of several bits that got cut in editorial.
And allow me to help Currey a bit with his sales description. The person Wandrei signed the on-the-block Arkham stock list (Item 130) to is one of the Hughesdon family. Lived immediately next door to Don Wandrei. When he died Wandrei left everything to the Hughesdons — the legendary library, the house, the works.
Paul Dobish checks in with his latest acquisitions in the quest to land Arkham House ephemera, in this case excavating in the fecund primordial mire that is The Due to the Death Series.
In Arkham House Ephemera: The Classic Years 1937-1973you’ll find a selection of The Due to the Death Series, quick announcements made by the staff at Arkham House after the sudden passing of founder August Derleth in 1971. No telling precisely how many variants may exist. John D. Haefele and I knew of at least a dozen when we put together the book, but there well might be dozens more. “To cut to the chase,” I wrote, “five are shown full page, one after another.” I also slipped three more in toward the back, opposite the collation comparing our new Item numbers with placements in the earlier Phil Mays List and the one I did for Firsts: The Book Collectors Magazine in 2002.
Haefele was agreeable to only showing a few, since he thinks they are ugly — and they are, especially put up against the earlier run of sometimes exquisite ephemera Items. Get the idea across, let collectors know what they’re after and let them loose.
“Given how scarce the Due to the Death Series Items are,” with his new purchase Dobish hoped he “would go from having 2 of 5 known to having 3 of those 5.” He’s using the numbered series in Eph Book for that calculus — as I say, I snuck in three more toward the back, not numbered as Items but nonetheless in the book.
“I did go from having 2 to having 3,” Dobish reports, “but I still need the same 3 more, as there are now 6 known variants. I had hoped that the Item would allow me to remove *something* from my HH ephemera want list.”
I myself only have one of the Due to the Death Items pictured in the book — Item 129, shot from my copy. I do have one of the faint purple-spirit examples, not pictured. As you can see from the example Dobish just nabbed, yeah, kind of ugly. Little workhorses trying to move out books. The text in some examples has faded toward invisibility.
Dobish also reports:
Note that the end of the ‘pages 2-3’ section is dated “in Summer 1972” rather than “January 1972” or “Spring 1972” or “late Summer 1972” or “Fall 1972” or the other “Fall 1972.”
Based on its “date” it would seem to have been issued between HH-126 and HH-127.
Dobish is using HH for his numbering — for the Herron-Haefele list. I like the purity of the Item number blocks in the pictorial history, but hey, the info is out in the world, and meant for collectors and booksellers to use. If now it is HH, then HH it is.
Item 123 is the Stock List (Coming in 1971-72) in which the other two Items are tack-stapled. Or, per Dobish, HH-123.
“Note that this copy of HH-123,” he says, “has a FOR THE TRADE leaf stapled inside the front cover. This is the first such example that I have come across.” In Eph Book we do not note that FOR THE TRADE comes with that catalog, but once Derleth created the insert (Item 70) it could serve as a “floating” addition that could appear in almost any catalog.
Dobish wants to have a FOR THE TRADE in every Stock List it is known to appear, so on that angle alone he’s scored with this purchase.
I’m also confident that this copy of Item 123 was sent to a book dealer. First clew is the FOR THE TRADE slip. Those didn’t go to regular buyers. And the next clews are the “SHORT DISCOUNT” and “NO DISCOUNT” written on the Due to the Death notice.
Morgan has his own personal Substack which he’s populating with posts from the past, in addition to new material. A great migration across platforms, similar to the nomadic cavemen and proto-cavemen striding across continents.
And in this case, as usual, rediscovered in Brian Leno’s storied trove.
Autograph Hound Saturday once more — and here’s Brian:
I’m really digging into my autograph folders, probably just procrastinating to avoid stacking and shelving books.
I don’t know if I’ve ever shown you my William Desmond Taylor signed cafe receipt. Love it. The signature looks great.
Pretty sure it’s legit, bought it off one of the Taylor authorities. Compares to other examples.
Research on Taylor at the San Gabriel Country Club revealed that he frequented it during January 1922. Said there are two receipts dated Jan 5 and 21 from then.
Could be sticking my neck out, but here’s a third.
I had forgotten that his death date was February 1, 1922 — this week, 104 years ago.
So he signed this receipt two weeks before he was murdered. Pretty cool.
Inscribed to Scott personally by me, as editor, and also by Donald Sidney-Fryer and Dennis Rickard as contributors. And we all knew Scott well, a pal for many years.
The seller renders this transcription of my holograph:
Inscribed on the title page by Herron; “For Scott Connors, Who, as a youth contributed and essay to an earlier assembly of what would become; The Dark Barbarian, Don Herron.”
Can’t the guy read my handwriting?
Check his sales image above. No way would I write “and essay” instead of “an essay.” And that is a colon, not a semi-colon. Plus, check out all the exclamation points.
But it reminds me of something otherwise long since submerged from the surface of the old brainpan: that Scott — as a very, very young Young Scott — was in the running for an initial lineup of essays on Robert E. Howard. Pretty sure it was his piece from Nyctalops, about Bran Mak Morn or something.
Also in that lineup I had my “Conan vs. Conantics,” but I realized those contents just weren’t good enough to do what I wanted to do.
So I worked on it and produced the critical landmark The Dark Barbarian.
By the time I got around to editing The Barbaric Triumph twenty years later, Scott was seasoned enough to be one of my first choices to contribute. Although I did have to beat him with a stick to get out of him what I knew he should be able to do. (And his essay “Twilight of the Gods: Howard and the Volkstumbewegung” is what I knew he could do — excellent, flat-out excellent.)
Everyone else may well know that rocker Alice Cooper has a son named Dashiell Cooper, b. 1985, also a rocker. I just stumbled over the news during casual browsing on the net. No doubt many more celebrities named a kid Dashiell and nobody told me about it.
And like so many of the Dashiells, apparently Alice Jr. goes by “Dash.” Of course he does. Even Hammett went with Dash once he hit Hollywood.
And also, if you haven’t heard, Dash Cooper fathered twins, named Falcon and Riot.
The last few days Amazon has had Eph Book — alias Arkham House Ephemera: The Classic Years — at 5% off. Today I see they’ve cut it a notch more to 7% off, and it’s in the top tier of sales in the History & Criticism Fantasy category. Someone must have ordered a copy — maybe even at the 5% off rate.
And the companion tome, the eBook LitCrit MegaPack that goes by the title Death Litalso just surged. Death Lit has the full text of my article from Firsts: The Book Collectors Magazine in which I first tackled the ephemera. Gave my personal history about getting into the hobby.
Left the memoir-heavy piece out of Eph Book because I wanted to keep it lean and mean, to the point. That’s my policy for guides, and since it also serves as a pictorial history we needed to leave lots of room for the covers and other images.
Autograph Hound Saturday again, and the maniacal Autograph Hound Brian Leno has been digging around in his trove, reminding himself of what he’s got.
“The Intruder by Beaumont is interesting,” Brian says, “because the dust jacket is signed by William Shatner, who starred in the movie.”
Charles Beaumont’s novel came out in 1959 and he then did the screenplay for the 1962 film directed by Roger Corman. About segregation in the South, generally considered Corman’s most serious — read best — movie, and one of Shatner’s most powerful roles.
Still raw-edged. And if you prefer a lighter approach to viewing you could watch it just to see the appearances by that circle of writers who scripted The Twilight Zone. Beaumont is in it, and George Clayton Johnson. William F. Nolan plays a town thug.
Brian tells me, “I don’t remember if I ever saw the movie but now I’ll keep an eye out. It’s a first but the jacket is in rough shape. Who cares? It’s signed by Captain Kirk!”
I can assure Brian that if he’d seen it, he’d remember it.
And he also throws in “A Zane Grey signed check, obviously he’s not difficult to get but I thought I should have him.”
Welcome to a hard-boiled and not without noir blog with news and reviews, occasional outbursts of maniacal Autograph Hound activity, plus archival records from the forty-five year run of The Dashiell Hammett Tour.
