Monthly Archives: December 2019

Rediscovered: Woolrich in The Mask

Another year down on These Mean Streets! How about we go out with a sharp Kachow! from the ever-ready roscoe? The noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook decided to dive into his holdings and dig out the autograph of … Continue reading

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Hammett: v. Carroll John Daly

Digging around in old partially mocked-up posts, I found another one which appears to be from circa late 2016 or early 2017: Last October I got in a note from hardboiled pulp hound Terry Zobeck, in which he reported: Today’s mail brought … Continue reading

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Two-Gun Bob: Top Ten, Baby

Brian Leno keeps his thumb on the pulse, and just popped in the news that Robert E. Howard’s landmark Cthulhu Mythos yarn “The Black Stone” made the cut for Library of America’s ten most read stories of the year — … Continue reading

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Hammett: Sneakin’ onto Jeopardy!

The December 27 2019 airing of Jeopardy! (S36E80) didn’t feature any Hammett Q’s or A’s, but the creator of the short fat Op shadowed his way onto the scene anyway. During the sequence where Alex Trebek interviews the contestants, the … Continue reading

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Hammett: “If I Had Been a Black Mask Reader in 1926”

I told John Locke that once his post on Hammett’s early years in the writing business hit the blog, if he noticed any places where he wanted to tweak a word or whatever, just to let me know and I’d … Continue reading

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Hammett: “Brigid Skates”

Back in 2009 I had a potential brush with the Court of Historical Review in San Francisco, which plays with old crimes — for fun, they re-try them. The loose plan was that I would provide background info on evidence … Continue reading

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Hammett: From Poisonville to Red Harvest, “Chapter One”

A couple of months ago I was prowling through the inventory of Mean Streets posts to salvage as yet unpublished material from the backlog. A few tentative ideas that got to skeletal mock-up stage I just deleted — weeding the … Continue reading

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Death Lit: You Might Want It for Xmas

— but copies won’t be circulating to the general public until next year. Still, I guess you could put it on a post-Xmas wish list. The item in question seems aimed at readers who like burglars and Lawrence Block — … Continue reading

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Hammett Takes on the Writing Racket, by John Locke

Mean Streets readers get a Christmas Treat this year from no less than the pulp authority John Locke, doing a deep-dive into the origins of Hammett’s career as a writer. John made a cool discovery in the forgotten trade magazines … Continue reading

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Hammett: “A pity that this should be called a detective story”

Evan Lewis is digging around in electronic newspaper archives again, and today he’s featuring several newsprint items related to the 1930 publication of that instant classic known as The Maltese Falcon. Fun — and even educational — stuff. One highlight: … Continue reading

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