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
Tag Archives: Autographs
Rediscovered: Buford Pusser
Autograph Hound Saturday once again, and we spotlight a famous lawman. When I was in college at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, I heard Buford Pusser would be signing clubs at a Ford dealership across town. Growing up … Continue reading
Posted in Film, News
Tagged Autographs, Breaker Morant, Brian Leno, Buford Pusser, Buford Pusser Museum, Joe Don Baker, MTSU, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Walking Tall
Rediscovered: Pirate Peake
Autograph Hound Saturday once more, and we enlist the services of the most maniacal collector of John Hancocks we know, none other than Brian Leno. Brian’s been updating me over the last few months on some of the autos rolling … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake, RLS, Robert Newton, Treasure Island
Rediscovered: Kornbluth
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, C. M. Kornbluth, Edwin Baird, Henry Kuttner, Henry S. Whitehead, James Tiptree Jr, Thomaas Pynchon, William Shatner, Zenna Henderson
Mort: McGinnis
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 … Continue reading
Rediscovered: John Hancock Writes Some Science Fiction
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, DisCon, Doc Howard, Fritz Leiber, Gordon R. Dickson, H. Beam Piper, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Randall Garrett, Will Jenkins
Rediscovered: Is It Doc’s John Hancock? Is It the Suicide Car?
After Brian Leno’s stunning eBay coup of a signed — and seemingly previously unseen — photograph of Dr. Isaac Howard, people (you know people) are getting in on the action. Some think the signature is authentic. Some feel it can’t … Continue reading
Posted in News, REH
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, Doc Howard, Gary Romeo, L. Sprague de Camp, Rob Roehm, The Cimmerian, Vera Baker
Rediscovered: A Little Birthday Treat
For birthday 119 for Robert E. Howard — should he have lived so long — Brian Leno roars into Autograph Hound action once more, pulling an original photo of REH’s father, actually signed by Doc Howard, from the time-lost ruins … Continue reading
Posted in News, REH
Tagged Autographs, Baker Kids, Brian Leno, Doc Howard, Famous Someday, L. Sprague de Camp, Vera Baker
Rediscovered: House of Bogart
Brian Leno keeps getting new autograph material all the time, every week, sometimes every day — he even has stuff crawling out of his immeasurable horde, practically attacking him. Here he is with another episode pulled straight from the life … Continue reading
Posted in Film, News
Tagged Algernon Blackwood, Autographs, Bogie, Book Collecting, Brian Leno, Doug Fairbanks, Guy Bogart, Lucy Bogart, Valentine
Rediscovered: Yet Another John Hancock from Arthur O. Friel
Autograph Hound Saturday sneaks up on us again. . . . As I predicted the noted if not maniacal autograph collector Brian Leno was kind of jealous of the inscribed book by Arthur O. Friel — one of the top … Continue reading
Rediscovered: The Return of Arthur O. Friel
We haven’t had an Autograph Hound Super-Sunday rollout in awhile, and I wasn’t expecting Arthur O. Friel to be the guy scribbling the old John Hancock. From everything I’ve heard, Friel signatures — much less Friel inscriptions — are rare. … Continue reading
