Check out this notice from Todd Warren on Facebook that John D. Haefele just sent my way, as we keep loose track of what prices are being asked for Arkham House ephemera — you know, the items we cover in our most excellent pictorial history Arkham House Ephemera: The Classic Years 1937-1973.
A nice lot, for which $2000 is quite in keeping with what they’ve been going for lately. In the Eph Book Twenty Years of Writing is cited as Item 24, Twenty-Five Years is Item 49, and Thirty Years is Item 61.
Most Arkham collectors know about these three, but are unaware of Item 25 — Twenty Years with a variant cover.
And just think if the group included the 1941 chapbook in which Derleth celebrated Fifteen Years of Writing! Item 5 in our check list — primal ephemera as Arkham House came into existence — the real title is August Derleth: Biographical, Personal, Bibliographical. Another five years would pass before Derleth came up with a better designation to landmark his ongoing literary output.
I suspect Item 5 alone would add another thou into the equation. Actually, if you’ve got that one, I bet it would double this asking price.
The bio on the author J. Aubrey Tyson is from January 2019, only seven years ago — we report new news, old news. Hammett news.
Turns out the info comes from a blog — Lesser Known Writers — by our pal Doug Anderson. Covering the waterfront where Neglected Writers roam. I think Doug is right up there with the late Richard Dalby for this sort of thing.
The review by Hammett hit print June 23 1930 and the body was found October 16 — a little over three months later.
Will says, “Probably a coincidence….”
Yeah, probably. I’m sure the guy had other troubles to worry about — but man, that is one killer review.
The week ended with Jeopardy! invoking Hammett’s name yet again: S42E90. 1/9/26. A Champions Wildcard showdown.
Double Jeopardy round, $2000 slot in the category Adapted for High School:
Rian Johnson adapted what he called “the weirdly poetic style of Dashiell Hammett” for high school in this film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Guy buzzes in: “What is Brick?”
Correct.
The late Bill Arney really liked that spin on The Maltese Falcon, and was the first to tell me about it. I’ve tried watching it a couple of times. Does nothing for me. But try it yourself, on the recommendation of Bill the Hat.
Brian Leno per norm supplies the signature, this time from the 1960s run of Belmont paperback originals of The Shadow ghosted by Dennis Lynds under the house name Maxwell Grant. Typically denigrated as a “Spy-Fi” reading of the character, not up there with the near 300 short novels done for The Shadow Magazine by Walter B. Gibson. Lynds did all of the Belmont PBOs, except the first one — The Return of the Shadow. That one came off Gibson’s typewriter and of course is considered canonical.
Note that Brian complains about the smell off his copy. I bet Brian would prefer to have a smelly book than no stinking book at all.
Here’s Brian:
Thought I’d let you see the latest addition to my Shadow collection.
Book is in really nice shape but if The Shadow was trying to hide in the darkness I’d still be able to smell him out.
But I guess it was cheap enough and the smell isn’t overpowering, so it’ll do.
Gibson’s double signature incorporating Maxwell Grant is, of course, cooler.
And tomorrow another entry in the Sam Spade Sweepstakes rains down. Check out the review by James Reasoner. James likes this kind of thing, even mentions he enjoyed the prequel novel Spade & Archer done by Joe Gores a few years ago.
I could barely skim that one.
A “back story” for Spade beyond the couple of refs in the Hammett novel? Didn’t — and doesn’t — need it.
And as the year 2025 rolls to a close, I notice that currently Eph Book — a.k.a. Arkham House Ephemera: The Classic Years — is priced at 9% off retail on Amazon.
A few days ago it was 11% off, after they initially tiptoed into the sales idea with 5% off. I’m curious if they’ll keep dinking around, or if it’ll revert to the $40 full retail and sit there throughout 2026.
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.
