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
Category Archives: Lit
Rediscovered: A MetaNoir Worth Another Mention
I’m poking along, compiling another LitCrit MegaPack of my selected essays and reviews. Just scanned through the over 200 reviews I did for Publishers Weekly. Almost all short. Very tight word count. One that caught my eye was Noir by … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Place of Hawks (Not the House of Arkham)
Brian Leno has nabbed another couple of items for his bulging shelves — or you could think of it as three, maybe four items. The book Place of Hawks. The belly-band on the dustwrapper. A letter from August Derleth, a … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Alfred Dashiell, Arkham House, August Derleth, Book Collecting, Brian Leno, Clycde Beck, Detroit News, Edward J. O;Brien, John D. Haefele
Rediscovered: An Audio/Video Review
John D. Haefele came across a review of our book on Arkham House ephemera on YouTube. “What a thoughtful and perceptive video-review of our book,” he wrote, “just discovered and very much appreciated!” And he got a comment from Leo … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Book Collecting, Infinite Text, John D. Haefele, Leo Grin, The Cimmerian Press, Vincent Starrett, YouTube
Rediscovered: The Shadow, Surrounded or Surmounted?
As I said I would, I dug into the various lists of seven fave The Shadow novels suggested by the poll in The Shadowed Circle Compendium. I figured out the ones that sounded like Must Reads for me. Five of … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Anthony Tollin, Evan Lewis, Jeopardy!, Maxwell Grant, The Shadow, The Shadowed Circle Compendium, Walter B. Gibson
Rediscovered: Writing Away in Arkham House
Autograph Hound Saturday again, but this time we ain’t got no John Hancock — we’ve got a book stamp. You know we could begin knocking out a series — a long series — of Book Stamp Saturdays or Mondays or … Continue reading
Rediscovered: A Ghost-Seer for Halloween
Leading up to Halloween I finally picked up my 1998 Ash-Tree Press edition of Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer by Alice and Claude Askew and read through. A solid set of eight British occult detective tales, all published in two months — … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Alice and Claude Askew, Ash-Tree Press, E.G. Swain, Hugh Lamb, Jack Adrian, M.P. Dare, Richard Dalby, The Great War, William Hope Hodgson
Rediscovered: Pirate Peake
Autograph Hound Saturday once more, and we enlist the services of the most maniacal collector of John Hancocks we know, none other than Brian Leno. Brian’s been updating me over the last few months on some of the autos rolling … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake, RLS, Robert Newton, Treasure Island
Rediscovered: 50 Years of Gangland’s Doom
The crew at The Shadowed Circle magazine just released a commemorative 50th anniversary edition of a landmark in Shadow studies. You’ll remember that in addition to the magazine not long ago they brought out the excellent omnibus The Shadowed Circle … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News
Tagged Frank Eisgruber Jr, H. Warner Munn, James Patterson, Robert Weinberg, The Shadow, The Shadowed Circle Compendium, Will Murray
Rediscovered: More On Dyson
Deuce Richardson dropped me a line to advise that awhile back I got name-checked on The Classic Horror Blog. M. Grant Kellermeyer pulls a quote from something I wrote on Arthur Machen as he surveys Machen’s character Dyson — in … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Arthur Machen, Deuce Richardson, Dyson, M. Grant Kellermeyer, The Classic Horror Blog
