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: Tour
Tour: By Appointment with Drake
The walk I did years ago for science fiction and fantasy writer David Drake, in town to do a signing in Borderlands Books, came up the other day in a blog from Deuce Richardson. Deuce liked the anecdote Drake told … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Sidney-Fryer to Sabato
The month kicked off with talk about Donald Sidney-Fryer’s book Songs and Sonnets Atlantean and we may as well whip out a Worm Ouroborus move by going out with yet more DSF and S&SA to sign off June. Martin Stever … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, Tour
Tagged Autographs, Book Collecting, Donald Sidney-Fryer, Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Martin Stever, Sabato Fiorello, Songs & Sonnets Atlantean
Hammett: The Jeopardy! Roundup
For fun I’ve been keeping track of the times Hammett or something to do with Hammett (i.e. Sam Spade or Lillian Hellman) popped up on the game show Jeopardy! Kind of a marker of the cultural zeitgeist. Now that the … Continue reading
Frisco Beat: A Slice of Life 1979-90
Our man on the street, Nathan Ward — keeping his eye on the New York scene — sends along his latest find: “I liked this evocation of San Francisco from 79-90 by the novelist Rachel Kushner in the current New … Continue reading
Tour: Journal of the Plague Year
2020, without question, a great year for binge-watching — but taking a moment to think about it, I don’t believe I did any more bingeing than usual (which is to say I am a binge-master, the only trick is tracking … Continue reading
Tour: Feeling a Trifle Bookish
Ah. The Angela Hill article on the Dashiell Hammett Tour I mentioned yesterday turns out to be only one of several articles in a new supplement to the Mercury News titled Bookish. Bookish. I like it. Couldn’t be more apt … Continue reading
Tour: Locked Down and Written Up
Even though the Dashiell Hammett Tour is under lock down, Angela Hill fired off a new article in the Mercury News today against the moment it comes gumshoeing back. Bound to happen — if I can pry myself away from … Continue reading
Sinister Cinema: A Meta-Pulp on Broadway
Pulps in the Movies! All Singing! All Dancing! On Sale Every Wednesday! Today John Locke, our resident pulp expert and movie buff, strikes a new chord in the hallelujah chorus of pulp sightings. Doctor, fix me up a new pulp, … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Lit, Tour
Tagged Broadway Melody of 1938, Buddy Ebsen, Frank Gruber, John Locke, MGM, Popular Detective, Pulps in the Movies, Shirley Temple
Tour: The Germ’s Afoot
Man! Look at all those people who could have been giving me coronavirus — or vice versa — except it was back in August 5, 2017 on a tour by appointment with Sisters in Crime, and I doubt any of … Continue reading
Rediscovered: More Ace and Parker
Coincidentally, the topic of Ace Atkins and Robert B. Parker also popped up in the last few days in exchanges with Kevin Cook, noted pulp and book collector. “At this point in time Parker is still an industry,” Kevin observed, … Continue reading
