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: Otto Penzler
Hammett: The Grit Conundrum
Or, The Return of Terry “Pure Texts” Zobeck! Apparently there’s no end to the fine-tuning on issues in re: pure texts. Take it away, Terry: Here’s another example of a Hammett story reprinted by Frederic Dannay where the edits predate … Continue reading
Posted in Dash
Tagged "The Judge Laughed Last", "The New Racket", EQMM, Frederic Dannay, Grit, Mysterious Bookshop, Otto Penzler, Terry Zobeck, Zobeck Series One
Hammett: “D. Hammett”
Autograph Hound Super-Sunday once more, and the noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook asked if I’d like to put up images from a very recent acquisition to his shelves, “signed by a guy named D. Hammett.” Sure. Why … Continue reading
Posted in Dash
Tagged Autographs, Book Collecting, Hillary Waugh, Kevin Cook, Mysterious Bookshop, Otto Penzler
Rediscovered: More Ace and Parker
Coincidentally, the topic of Ace Atkins and Robert B. Parker also popped up in the last few days in exchanges with Kevin Cook, noted pulp and book collector. “At this point in time Parker is still an industry,” Kevin observed, … Continue reading
Death Lit: You Might Want It for Xmas
— but copies won’t be circulating to the general public until next year. Still, I guess you could put it on a post-Xmas wish list. The item in question seems aimed at readers who like burglars and Lawrence Block — … Continue reading
Hammett: Working the Electronic Morgue
Speaking of the epic sale of Otto Penzler’s mystery library, you may recall that I used Evan Lewis as my man on the street covering the events, since he was interested in hunting down the auction lists and putting up … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, News
Tagged Book Collecting, Evan Lewis, John D. Squires, Lillian Hellman, Otto Penzler, Terry Zobeck
Hammett: More Zobeck v. Otto
Terry Zobeck popped in a micro review related to the sale of Otto Penzler’s mystery library a few months ago, which sucked all the oxygen out of the room for awhile. The word, from Terry: My copy of Otto Penzler’s … Continue reading
Rediscovered: An Otto and Ellroy
Autograph Hound Super-Sunday opens with Kevin Cook refining his terms, and letting us know he’s got even worse autos than the one from Kent Harrington he was talking about yesterday: With Kent’s autograph, what I meant to express was that … Continue reading
Posted in Lit
Tagged Autographs, George Pelecanos, James Ellroy, Kent Harrington, Kevin Cook, Mysterious Bookshop, Otto Penzler
Rediscovered: Some Semi-Simulated John Hancocks from Michael Connelly
So what signature-related extravaganza could Kevin Cook dazzle us with for Autograph Hound Super-Sunday? How about an array of Michael Connelly autos progressing from fuller signature to the squiggly “MC” I’ve mentioned here before? Kind of like a reversal of those images of … Continue reading
Posted in DMac, Lit
Tagged Autographs, Kevin Cook, Michael Connelly, Mysterious Bookshop, Otto Penzler
Tour: Some Media No More
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon — and who knows?, maybe for the rest of your life — the Some Media clump in the banner above is going to disappear. Every few years I dink around with the … Continue reading
Hammett: Zobeck v. Otto
Just got a note from Terry Zobeck commenting on the auction of Hammett titles from the library of Otto Penzler. Terry reports: “I lost out on that Red Harvest—I went as high as $70,000 but had to stop when my … Continue reading
