I’ve owned a copy ofGangland’s Doom by Frank Eisgruber Jr. for several decades now. I don’t think I got it straight off the presses in 1974, but ended up with one soon enough and have lugged it around with me ever since. Your essential intro to The Shadow of the pulp magazines, with a nice cover by Franklin E. Hamilton. Sure, I could have given it to someone else along the way or traded it for something. But I like it. And after all these years, it is useful — laying out the info on the various identities The Shadow assumed, his little army of agents, and the legion of sinister villains he faced. A list of The Shadow issues, pub dates, title of each adventure contained. In an era when some guy new to the pulp hero Just Didn’t Know, here you go: the first reference book.
“Hopefully,” the bookseller Robert Weinberg — and later book author and comics scripter — said in his 1974 preface, “this booklet will be the first of a number devoted to the pulps of the thirties and forties.” Weinberg published an extensive run of booklets, as well as little magazines such as The Weird Tales Collector. Someone must have done a bibliography by now. High points for me would be the chapbooks containing Tales of the Werewolf Clan by H. Warner Munn (collected in time by Donald M. Grant in two deluxe hardcover volumes).
Slim, not even a quarter of an inch thick, the text was done on a typewriter and shrunk down — obviously trying to keep it cheap so the next booklets might follow.
Still, a classic was born.
The 50th Anniversary edition benefits from years of advances in printing technology. Larger font. Color covers.
It reprints the original contents but adds such flourishes as a new intro by pulp historian Will Murray — and includes two letters Eisgruber wrote to Murray in 1978 and 1980, as Will was near the beginning of his now long career. By the way, an updated intro by Eisgruber lets us know what he thought of the recent James Patterson “Shadow.”
Of his effort Eisgruber states, “You want information, facts, etc., you’ve got it. You want grand style and psychology — not in Gangland’s Doom.”
(And may I add that on this topic I’m not just another guy mouthing off — I know what it means to do a landmark book is such studies. My 1984 book on Robert E. Howard, The Dark Barbarian, just marked its 40th anniversary last year. I’m confident it’ll get to 50 years. Maybe not 100. . . .)
M. Grant Kellermeyer pulls a quote from something I wrote on Arthur Machen as he surveys Machen’s character Dyson — in general, but specifically covering the story “The Inmost Light.” With lots of amusing asides on other “occult detectives.” Who could argue that William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder isn’t by far the best of the major occult dicks?
Dyson, of course, while he can be squeezed into the category, isn’t a lot like John Silence, Blackwood’s investigator, or the others. Machen pulls his own take off, as you’d expect. I guess I simply can’t see Dyson showing up for a cocktail party in London with Carnacki and company.
Just the mention of the topic makes me want to do yet another reread on the entire Dyson series.
When I did the note Kellermeyer quotes from I had the nagging thought that I was missing one of the Dyson tales during that reread. Deuce happened to come to the rescue that time and pointed out that the story I inadvertently skipped was none other than “The Inmost Light.”
Don’t think it ever made it to DVD, only appearing long-ago as a VHS tape. If I had been thinking harder at the time I ought to have taken my copy of the VHS to the screening of Woman Chaser we did in San Francisco a few months ago, gotten Patrick Warburton to sign it. But as I told him at the time, I really regretted not bringing along my copy of The Tick boxset.
Lots of limited “states” on this one, including one boxed with Blu-Ray and a copy of the novel. New interviews with Patrick and Joe. Maybe best of all, the disc also includes the color version of the movie, never before seen. They shot in color and converted the theatrical release into b&w.
“After 25 years,” Joe wrote, “I’m very grateful for our new set.”
He also said, “Our San Francisco screening was instrumental in making all of this happen.” Hey. Maybe. At least it couldn’t have hurt anything.
“Floyd Thursby’s hotel features prominently and I wasn’t quite sure from your guidebook which hotel it would have been, but I settled on the circled one from the 1928 city directory (see attached). Hope that was right!
“I actually had a little correspondence with the current owner and he said a number of folks have told him his is Thursby’s hotel.”
Best I recall, I didn’t see enough solid clews in The Maltese Falcon to pinpoint the Miles crib.
Terry Zobeck, our pure texts guy, noticed the story instantly, and issued the proclamation:
“Let the Sam Spade floodgates open!
“Mark Coggins has published a Spade short story that provides a sort of epilogue to The Maltese Falcon.
“It’s pretty good for what it is. Coggins, who you may know, is a fine writer. His Vulture Capital was a nice homage to The Glass Key.”
How about another Autograph Hound Saturday? It’s been awhile, and on the side the topic came up of authors who have rare signatures — if you’ve got enough loot laying around, you can shell it out but the autos that are really rare, that takes some luck to find them.
A few tough ones are James Tiptree Jr, Henry Kuttner, Thomas Pynchon — and C. M. Kornbluth. The general toughest categories are writers who died young, and the writers who didn’t show up for the usual signings at conventions and bookstore promotions. Recluses can be quite elusive.
Our resident Autograph Hound Brian Leno of course has something to talk about in the form of a signed cheque to Kornbluth. Brian says, “Here’s my Kornbluth with the magazine appearance he got paid for, under a pseudonym.”
Take it away, Brian:
I bought this one a few years back and am very happy I did, undoubtedly it’s worth much more than I shelled out then.
The pulp is Super Science Stories, November 1940, and the story appeared under the Kornbluth pseudonym S.D. Gottesman.
Kornbluth is ultra rare, died at 34 after hurriedly shoveling his sidewalk and then running to catch his train. That’ll bring on a heart attack if anything will.
Plus his Wikipedia entry states that for some unknown reason he didn’t brush his teeth nor make appointments with dentists and as a result his teeth were green and he tried to hide this blemish by talking with his hands covering his mouth.
I think it would have been easier to just brush. This hygienic issue probably didn’t help his health any.
A signature that is as rare as hen’s teeth (sorry), very desirable.
Zenna Henderson is another rare one, I’m lucky enough to own a signed copy of The Anything Box. As a side note most people perhaps don’t know (or remember) but there was a Made-for-TV movie called The People from 1972 based on her series. The flick featured William Shatner and Kim Darby. Two words can sum it up. Crap. Crap.
More rare ones, not just science fiction, would include Good Old Mac Everett McNeil, Lovecraft’s buddy. Henry S. Whitehead is a tough, almost impossible one to find and a signed book by Weird Tales editor Edwin Baird is another daunting task.
Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith are easy, Robert E. Howard a bit more difficult. Once again it’s just a matter of finances. (Even Hemingway is easy if you’re rolling in the dough.)
But while anybody can own a good autograph collection if you’ve got the money, I would think most collectors would agree that it’s the rare ones that get the juices flowing.
Jeopardy! kind of laid off Hammett clews for while, then surprised me with a sudden two-fisted assault.
S41E154 — April 10, 2025 — in the initial round offered the category Mystery Loves Company.
The $1000 clew:
8 paragraphs in on “The Thin Man,” he narrates, “My glass was empty. I asked . . . what she (wanted) to drink, she said Scotch and soda”
Contestant came up with “Who is Nick Charles?”
Who else?
(And for the pure text fans in the audience, the words in that eighth paragraph read “My glass was empty. I asked her what she would have to drink, she said Scotch and soda.”)
Five days later on Tax Day, April 15 — S41E157 — in the Double Jeopardy round — category Real Housewives Taglines — $2000 clew:
My man exposed the means streets with crime mysteries like “The Glass Key”; I prefer Broadway & got there with “The Children’s Hour”
The contestant that time also nailed it: “Who is Hellman?”
They can keep dipping into that well of Hammett-related clews forever.
Looks as if Hard Case Crime will be popping the Collins sequel to The Maltese Falcon in January 1926. And The Return of the Maltese Falcon will have this piece now excerpted for CrimeReads as an afterword.
Fun to read, and the sources Collins says he mostly relied on are ones I would have given top plugs. Surf over and check it out. Even if you have no interest in reading a Falcon pastiche, it’s one Hammett fan speaking from the heart to others.
The mini-review of my tour book is satisfyingly well-crafted. If I were going to do another edition of the tour book, it’d definitely make the cut for a lead blurb.
My favorite line reads, “Over the years, I have read every Hammett book-length biography I could find, and that’s more than a few; but the guidebook’s exceptional ‘brief’ bio is the only one I referred to before I began (and during the writing of) this novel.”
I selected as a main blurb for earlier tour book editions a couple of lines from The Mystery Fancier. One reads, “It contains photos, maps, bibliography, and the best capsule biography of Hammett I have ever read.”
I’m happy the little bio continues to get some recognition.
Without digging a copy out from deep in the Hammett Tour Files, I believe that issue of The Mystery Fancier — officially, I guess, The MYSTERY FANcier — came out in the 1980s. And my memory is that the reviewer was Marvin Lachman. Major genre scholar — and he wrote well.
Brian Leno has prepared himself for decades with an ever increasing stock of John Hancocks, now coming in handy to memorialize people as they fall. For this particular Autograph Hound Saturday he offers:
I know I don’t get out much but I just heard Robert McGinnis died on March 10th, at 99 years of age.
What a talent. All those James Bond posters. All those great book covers with sexy women driving tough guys wild.
It’s too bad, but at 99 he certainly lived a full life.
Autograph Hound Saturday once again and Brian Leno sends in a few siggies from a recent purchase. Nothing too exciting, meat & potatoes stuff. He already had several of these banked in his files. One nice angle is that Will Jenkins also signs as his most famous penname Murray Leinster, and puts quote marks on the pseudonym.
DisCon was the 21st World Science Fiction Convention, Washington, D. C. — August 31-September 2 1963.
Here’s Brian:
This is a pretty cool little program book from 1963. Interesting stuff. At one o’clock on Sunday there’s a muster of the Hyborian Legion with “de Camp and his cohorts on Conan.”
But the coolest thing is the Autograph page. I already had most but I saw no reason not to have two H. Beam Piper — a suicide like REH — signatures in my library.
Asimov, de Camp and Leiber were already in my collection.
Randall Garrett is a new one for me. I think he’s a bit tough to get as his life evidently took a dive into shit as his health got bad.
And Gordon R. Dickson might be a new addition. Not sure.
The program book is in tough shape. Pages are loose as the staples have disappeared.
Still, all this fun for a couple of Franklins. Lots of cool ads. A bargain.
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.
