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: News
Rediscovered: The Big Picnic
John D. Haefele just got a nice nod for Xmas for his Cyclopean tome Lovecraft: The Great Tales — and from noted Lovecraftian Ken Hite, no less. In November I got an enthusiastic yet somewhat startled note from my academic … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News
Tagged Book Collecting, Chicken-Fried Cthulhu, John D. Haefele, Ken Hite, Kickstarter, Lovecraft, Skelos, Tom Krabacher
Rediscovered: ERB in the Papers, Too
The noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook sent in some additional thoughts and info on the idea of writers such as Hammett getting a ton of newspaper action with reprints — lots of reprints — from their backlog. Kevin approaches … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Lit, News
Tagged A. L. Searles, All Around, Edgar Rice Burroughs, J. Allen St. John, Kevin Cook, Street & Smith
Hammett: His Garbo Speaks! Moment
Holy cow — suddenly it is Audio Hound Super-Sunday! And longtime Mean Streets maven Terry Zobeck just heard some sound he’s been waiting to hear for many, many long years. Here’s Terry with the scoop: In 2001, at the Washington, … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, News
Tagged "Two Sharp Knives", Bill Mullins, Dick Tracy, Jo Hammett, Richard Layman, Studio One, Thomas Fasano
Rediscovered: More Burnham
Autograph Hound Super-Sunday and the intrepid John Hancock Hunter Brian Leno drops in a note to say, “I know I’ve written about Burnham on your blog but I don’t think I ever showed you his signature. “This book he inscribed … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, Frederick Russell Burnham, Henry Fairfield Osborn
Rediscovered: 19 Minutes with Fafhrd and the Mouser, and Fritz
Over on The Pulp.Net I just gave Bill Lampkin the okay to put up an article I did back in 2014 for his zine The Pulpster — a good one, if I say so myself (hell, even definitive), on the … Continue reading
Posted in Frisco, Lit, News, REH
Tagged Bill Lampkin, Fafhrd, Fritz Leiber, Harry Otto Fischer, Leo Grin, Sword-and-Sorcery, The Cimmerian, The Gray Mouser, The Pulp.Net, The Pulpster
Hammett: Top Ten
ABEbooks just released a list of their top money-makers for 2021 and Hammett comes in at no. 10 — not with a first edition, but with a much later reprint of The Maltese Falcon inscribed to Bebe Daniels. Bebe played … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Frisco, Lit, News
Tagged ABEbooks, Bebe Daniels, Book Collecting, Dwight Frye, The Midget Bandit, Wilmer Cook
Rediscovered: On Library Shelves. . .
Got a note and a couple of pics from Tom Krabacher, academic, to let me know that “Great Tales has arrived in the academy!” If not earlier in other venues, John D. Haefele’s recent and monumental tome Lovecraft: The Great … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Steinbeck, Classical Puzzle Mystery Writer
Brian Wallace pops in a link to a long article from the Los Angeles Review of Books covering a crime novel — with werewolves, kind of — John Steinbeck wrote at the start of his career. It was 1930 and … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News
Tagged Brian Wallace, Edgar Box, George Sterling, Gore Vidal, John Steinbeck, Los Angeles Review of Books
Frisco Beat: Wolf and Greek Go All Primeval
Our pal Morgan “The Morgman” Holmes has a dictum — either the product of his own profound deliberations or picked up over shots of whiskey in a seedy bar held together with vines and rattan somewhere on the outskirts of … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Frisco, Lit, News, REH
Tagged Before Adam, Clark Ashton Smith, George Sterling, Jack London, literary suicides, Lovecraft, Morgan Holmes, Popular Magazine, Vince Emery
