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: Willeford
Rediscovered: Tully and Hammett and Chaney (Oh My!)
Finally got back from PulpFest, finished shaking the flakes of rotting wood-pulp dust off my traveling gear, and guess it’s time to jump back into the blogosphere. To reboot the action, how about some comments from Mark Dawidziak, the Jim Tully biographer, … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Lit, Willeford
Tagged Charmian London, Eugene O'Neill, George Jean Nathan, H. L. Mencken, Jack London, Jim Tully, Lon Chaney Sr., Mark Dawidziak, PulpFest, The American Mercury, Vanity Fair
Rediscovered: The Underworld Years
Let’s ease gently from Biography Month into LitCrit Month. . . . In the intro to their bio on Jim Tully, Bauer and Dawidziak have this statement: Frank Scully, who knew Tully better than anyone, had a warning for any … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, Willeford
Tagged Dr. Sam: Johnson, Frank Scully, H. L. Mencken, Jack Dempsey, Jack London, James Boswell, Jim Tully, Mark Dawidziak, Muhammad Ali, Paul J. Bauer, The American Mercury, Waldo Frank
Hammett: Including Murder
A few months back Evan Lewis of Davy Crockett’s Almanack let me know he was drifting into town, so I lined up a day where I could show him and his wife as many of the lost byways, precipice gradiants, … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Frisco, Lit, REH, Willeford
Tagged "Bodies Piled Up", "Night Shots", "The Gatewood Caper", 620 Eddy, Black Mask, Blood and Thunder, Cap Shaw, Clues, Dave Lewis, Donald Wandrei, E. R. Hagemann, Evan Lewis, Frederick Nebel, Howard Wandrei, Humanities Research Center, Including Murder, John D. MacDonald, Leslie Charteris, Lester Dent, Lillian Hellman, Pulps, pure texts, Robert S. Powell, Terry Zobeck, Tony Hillerman, Will Murray
Tour: Some Kindle Some More
Got another note from Vince Emery, letting me know that the dustup between Amazon and IPG — Independent Publisher Group — has been resolved and you can once again purchase the Hammett Tour book on your Kindle, if you’ve got a … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Lit, News, Tour, Willeford
Tagged Book Collecting, Frederic Dannay, Fritz Leiber, Hammett Tour Book, Kindle, Lillian Hellman, Philip K. Dick, Vince Emery
Rediscovered: Zane Grey
My recent trip down to Musso & Frank and the link yesterday to my guidebook The Literary World of San Francisco remind me that I’ve been meaning to blurb the Zane Grey Pueblo Hotel on Catalina Island for awhile now. I’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Lit, REH, Willeford
Tagged Donald Sidney-Fryer, literary homes, Literary World of San Francisco, Musso & Frank, Zane Grey, Zane Grey Pueblo
Death Lit: The Torch is Passed, Kakonis to Levison
You have to poke around some on this site to find it, but if you do there’s an enthusiastic endorsement for the crime novels of Tom Kakonis. And I guess some people may surf right in to that page, because Kakonis’s … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News, REH, Willeford
Tagged Bukowski, Chester Himes, Criss Cross, Elmore Leonard, Floyd Salas, Gerald Kersh, How to Rob an Armored Car, Iain Levison, Jim Thompson, John Fante, Joseph Hirsch, Tom Kakonis, Truman Capote
Rediscovered: The Bad Plus, Plus Crime
Out of the blue I got a note from Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus, who’ll be in town this weekend for six shows in Yoshi’s Jack London Square, and wants to get together and talk Willeford. Sure. The guy’s … Continue reading
