After John Locke hit the Up and Down These Mean Streets scene late last year, I got to steer him to various interesting moments in the extensive backlog of posts. One of them was to the bizarre idea that Gutman’s daughter Rhea in the novel The Maltese Falcon was also — dressed in male drag — the little gunsel Wilmer Cook.
John said, “I’d forgotten Rhea Gutman, I read the book so long ago.
“If she was Wilmer, Hammett wouldn’t have wasted a twist (both meanings) like that!”
