Following up on his track down of a newspaper reprint for “The Farewell Murder” the other day, Evan Lewis rounds up a few more! Surf over and give it a look.
Obviously Hammett saw more action in newspapers than he did in the pulps, and any future bibliographies will have a lot of stuff to add in.
I’m not saying that means the pulps diminish in importance — they were the first appearances, and any book collector can tell you the first trumps any reprint.
But the papers — my pal the late John D. Squires was talking this angle up years ago, and if you remember Terry Zobeck did some newsprint hunting on this blog before John’s early tips. I know JDS spotted “The Tenth Clew” and “Dead Yellow Women” — so I guess the main question now is whether or not all the Op shorts went into the rotation.
Or maybe only the stories Hammett possibly considered the best, worthy of reprint. And if so, those scholars who enjoy setting up rankings of the top material, seeking clews to establish a bulletproof quality canon, have another major factor to consider.
