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
Hollywood Beat: 1922 Whitley
When I got back to Hollywood to stop in Musso & Frank for the third time, I was really curious to check into what Dennis McMillan had told me — that Jim Thompson was a regular there, drinking at the … Continue reading
Posted in DMac, Film, Lit
Tagged Craig Graham, Jim Thompson, Musso & Frank, Peckinpah, Robert Mitchum, Robert Polito, Steve McQueen, The Getaway
Hollywood Beat: More Musso
Finally, I got a date set-up — Saturday August 20, 2011 — where I could hit Musso & Frank with Craig Graham, the guy who first told me about the place. Craig reserved a table with a view of the bar. … Continue reading
Posted in DMac, Film, Lit
Tagged Charlie Chaplin, Craig Graham, Donald Sidney-Fryer, Jim Thompson, Jimmy Durante, Leo Grin, Lillian Hellman, Musso & Frank, Robert Polito, Steve McQueen, Vagabond Books
Hollywood Beat: Musso & Frank
Since I missed out on Musso & Frank for years, I’ve been trying to catch up, stopping in every time I make the drive down to LA — I figure I won’t burn out, given that I only drop south once or twice a … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, DMac, Film, Lit
Tagged Bukowski, Charles Bronson, Charlie Chaplin, Craig Graham, Doug Fairbanks, Ed Lauter, Harlan Ellison, Jim Thompson, Johnny Depp, Leo Grin, Musso & Frank, Raymond Chandler, Vagabond Books
Tour: Portland Weighs In
Out of the blue, a double-whammy from Portland. Over on the Davy Crockett Almanack site Evan Lewis does a nice appreciation of Hammett’s The Big Knockover — the Op adventure that ought to make anyone with a pulse a Hammett fan for … Continue reading
Posted in Frisco, Lit, News, Tour
Tagged Bill Crider, EQMM, Evan Lewis, Hammett Tour Book, Terry Zobeck, The Big Knockover
Frisco Beat: The Return of Donald Sidney-Fryer
This coming Saturday, September 17, starting at 3p.m., you’ll find Donald Sidney-Fryer back in town for a signing in Borderlands. He did his stint as a San Francisco writer, starting sometime in the 1960s, tossing himself full tilt into the Hippie Scene … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Frisco Mysteries
Randal Brandt of The Bancroft Library — honcho of the website devoted to mysteries set in and around San Francisco — shot in an email announcing an exhibit of local crime novels they just opened in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery in … Continue reading
Hammett: The Sam Spade Stories
Frequent Guest Blogger Terry Zobeck returns, to survey the three short stories featuring Sam Spade that Hammett sold to the slicks in 1932. I echo his opinions on these tales — compared to the best of the Op yarns, the … Continue reading
Rediscovered: More Fantômas
Good old John D. Squires continues his arcane research into the cross-promotion between fiction and film early in the last century, and just tumbled to another Fantômas ad, for all the Fantômas fans out there.
891 Post: Tub Shot 2
The grainy image above dates from the last days when Bill Arney held down the fort in the Sam Spade apartment in 891 Post Street, quick, rough documentation before the rooms went on into a then unknown future. Now we know … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Digging Out the Dannay
I’ve never been interested in the fiction of author “Ellery Queen” — nom de guerre for the cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. The only Queen titles I ever recall reading were some of the 1960s novels ghost written … Continue reading
