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: April 2020
Rediscovered: Modern Arkham Ephemera — My Bad
Uhoh. The other day I finally got around to annotating my working file copy of Firsts which features a checklist of Modern Arkham House Ephemera by John D. Haefele. I’m not talking anything too fancy. I go through with a … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News
Tagged Arkham House, August Derleth, Firsts, John D. Haefele, PulpFest, Rusty Hevelin
Sinister Cinema: Kong
Pulps in the Movies. On Sale Every Wednesday. Today the noted pulp expert John Locke takes us back to the days of 1933 via the digital magic of 2005 — the days when newsstands selling pulps populated the big cities, … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Lit
Tagged Berenice Abbott, John Locke, King Kong, Manhattan Bridge, Once Upon a Time in America, Peter Jackson, Pulps in the Movies
Rediscovered: A Library in the Last Redoubt
Heard from Kevin Cook, noted book and pulp collector. He’s scouring his library — as seen above — in search of obscure stuff he can bring to the attention of The Publick. Kevin tells me he’s thinking about writing a … Continue reading
Hammett: Cheaper Crooms
No less and none other than Mike Humbert chips in a text message after reading yesterday’s Pulps in the Movies post about Hammett’s line “the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.” “I thought you’d enjoy this,” Mike thumbs. “In … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Chatting with Joe Gores
Crime writer Mark Coggins just wrote with the news: “I finally transcribed my (long) interview with Joe Gores about the Falcon from 2007.” Sure to be a surfing destination for Hammett fans. Plus Mark mentions that a recent book has … Continue reading
Sinister Cinema: Gaudy Wilmerian Patter
Pulps in the Movies! On Sale Every Wednesday! In his exciting series renowned pulp expert John Locke has hit them short and sweet, the slam-bam thanks for holding a pulp, m’am posts. He’s gone back into the silent era. He’s … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Lit
Tagged Black Mask, Bogie, Cap Shaw, Elisha Cook Jr., Grand Central Murder, John Locke, MGM, Oscar, Paul Cain, Peter Ruric, Pulps in the Movies, Tom Conway, Van Heflin, Warner Brothers, Wilmer Cook
Sinister Cinema: Pulps in the Movies Gets a Cinesavant Nod
John Locke’s ongoing series Pulps in the Movies — On Sale Every Wednesday — gets some coverage over on Cinesavant, about halfway down the column. If you like movies you’d like Pulps in the Movies, right? But today is Tuesday … Continue reading
Two-Gun Bob: More on Gobbett
Pulp collector John Locke adds to the discourse: Saw your Ed Gobbett post. I met him through the mail in the 1980s, later in person. Nice guy. He lived about ten miles from John Gunnison. We occasionally caravaned from DC … Continue reading
