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. 
The Dashiell Hammett Tour
1977-2022
Arkham House Ephemera
The Classic Years 1937–1973
Death Lit
Essays and Reviews Selected from Fifty Years of Writing 1974–2024
Willeford
The Book
Monthly Archives: September 2015
Sinister Cinema: The Wild Life of Warren Oates
Every year or two I make the plunge into looking at refs to me on Google, though I have never managed to get to the end, if there is an end. Kind of fun to see various previously unknown citations … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Ford — The Flivver King!
Bio Month is rocketing to a finish. Sometime today Nathan Ward is supposed to hit town. His appearance in Mechanics’ Library tomorrow is sold out (but he is dropping into a few bookshops to sign store stock, if you really want an … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News, REH
Tagged Brian Leno, flivvers, Henry Ford, Mechanics' Library, Upton Sinclair
Two-Gun Bob: The Flivver Dither
It is now two days since I rebutted the note on the Two-Gun Raconteur blog about a flivver not being, specifically, a Ford. No corrections or apologies or anything — gee, you’d think Damon Sasser got mad at me or … Continue reading
Hammett: A Few Notes from a Former Thin Man
Naturally, my post the other day about the first meeting of me and no less than Bill Arney on a tour back in 1982 was noticed by Bill Arney, who says: “Oh, man. “That was my first hat, my first … Continue reading
Hammett: Getcher Tickets!
Got a note yesterday from the Mechanics’ Library that 71 seats have sold for the appearance by Hammett biographer Nathan Ward (left, pictured in his Brooklyn turf) next Wednesday — if that’s not sold out, it is closing in. Not like … Continue reading
Two-Gun Bob: The Flivver Controversy Erupts!
After my post yesterday about flivvers being Fords they added “A Note from the Editor” to the Word of the Week on Two-Gun Raconteur, which reads: Apparently Don Herron has his ignition wires crossed in a recent post on his … Continue reading
Two-Gun Bob: Flivvers
I’ve been irked by the dismal state of Robert E. Howard criticism in recent years, and I’m planning on getting back to the subject next month — which I’m thinking could be LitCrit Month. (Howard criticism, of course, has been … Continue reading
John D. Haefele’s “A Testament to His Influence”
To celebrate the third edition of John D. Haefele’s A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos going live on Kindle — illustrated in full color from his pristine holdings of Arkham House books and ephemera — we present a review intimately connected … Continue reading
