A Hammett-Seasoned Assembly

(Above) R-Evolution, American artist Marco Cochrane’s 47-foot-tall, steel rod-and-mesh sculpture of a nude woman, rises from Embarcadero Plaza on the San Francisco waterfront. It has stood there in front of the Ferry Building since April 2025.

Time was when I visited San Francisco regularly—maybe once a year, or at least once every couple of years. However, before last week, a full decade and a half had elapsed since my previous call on Northern California’s most colorful and captivating metropolis; the last time was back in 2010, when Bouchercon took over the Hyatt Regency hotel on the Embarcadero, directly across from the historic Ferry Building. During the interim, I’d seen stories about how that City by the Bay had fallen into social and financial decline. Elon Musk, the South Africa-born right-winger who founded Tesla and destroyed Twitter (today’s X)—and who is a product of Silicon Valley, the high-tech hub located just to the south—had portrayed San Francisco as “a crime-ridden wasteland where homeless drug addicts freely roam.”

So I was fully prepared to see this place I have loved for so long reduced to a shadow of its erstwhile glory. Yet that isn’t what I found. In fact, central San Francisco looked pretty much like every other big city I’ve traveled to since the COVID-19 pandemic. There were scattered empty storefronts along Market Street, and one of my all-time favorite breakfast venues—Dottie’s True Blue Café, formerly on Jones Street but moved since my last drop-by to a larger, Sixth Street location—had shut its doors. Yes, there were some unhoused residents on sidewalks, benefiting from this burg’s moderate climate and extensive public services, but no more than I see nowadays in Seattle or Portland ... and none of them were shooting up in the gutters. San Francisco struck me as a locale that’s weathered bad economic times and is on its way to finding its footing again.

It certainly did a superb job of hosting the 2026 Left Coast Crime convention, which was held last week (Thursday, February 26, to Sunday, March 1) in the same Hyatt Regency I’d frequented 15 years ago.

Not surprisingly, given that (1) we were in Dashiell Hammett country and (2) this year brought an end to copyright restrictions on the author’s detective-fiction masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon, there was considerable attention paid to that 1930 novel. Falcon statuettes were presented to all four of LCC 2026’s guests of honor. One of the gathering’s Thursday panel discussions found Bay Area author Mark Coggins and Randal S. Brandt—who writes The Rap Sheet’s “Book Into Film” column and curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library—examining the book’s still-enduring impact on crime fiction. And that same night, Coggins and Brandt appeared together at a downtown used bookshop to chat with other mystery enthusiasts about Poltroon Press’ recent re-release of The Maltese Falcon, to which both contributed.

One of this convention’s first panel exchanges was “Let’s Talk About the Black Bird,” which addressed Dashiell Hammett’s best-known novel, The Maltese Falcon. Participating were—left to right—authors Elizabeth Crowens (Bye Bye Blackbird), Domenic Stansberry (the North Beach mysteries, The Lizard), and Kelli Stanley (the Miranda Corbie series, The Reckoning), as well as librarian Randal Brandt, who moderated the colloquy. Not shown, but also part of the group, was Mark Coggins. He took this shot and e-mailed it to me with a note that joked, “Looks like someone photobombed them.”

Hours after that panel presentation concluded, Brandt and Coggins (shown above on the left and right, respectively) joined San Francisco author and philanthropist Robert Mailer Anderson (center) at Kayo Books, a treasury of used works on Post Street downtown, to celebrate Hammett’s considerable influence on today’s detective fiction. Afterward, Anderson—who rents the pocket-edition apartment at 891 Post where Hammett lived from 1927 to 1929 and penned his first three novels—escorted a few members of the audience on a brief tour of those rehabbed digs.

Yes, that’s me, Jeff Pierce, seated in the very apartment (#401) where ex-Pinkerton operative Hammett crafted his earliest novels and many of his short stories. Neither the wooden desk nor the typewriter are original fixtures, but they certainly add to the crib’s Jazz Age ambiance. (Photograph by Mark Coggins)

In a memorable treat for yours truly, immediately prior to the Kayo Books event, Coggins and I accompanied local novelist Robert Mailer Anderson (Boonville) to the fourth-floor apartment Hammett once rented at 891 Post Street, one block east of the bookshop. It was there, in the late 1920s, that Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon were all batted out noisily on a typewriter, the author likely working longer into the night than his neighbors would have preferred. For many years, architect and Hammett fan Bill Arney lived in those 275-square-foot lodgings, but after his passing in 2021, Anderson took over the rent. He has since restored the apartment to how it might have looked during Hammett’s time. Anderson is also working on a project that will bring modern authors into the place and film them reading excerpts from Hammett’s prose.

For a guy like me, who discovered Dashiell Hammett, Sam Spade, and the Continental Op during college, and who’s been re-reading their adventures ever since, this opportunity to stand where their fictional lives began was nothing short of electrifying.

Those four days in mostly sunny San Francisco were a whirlwind of activities, from genre panel discussions and serendipitous encounters in hallways with friends to the discovery of new attractions the city has to offer. A few of my other favorite experiences:

• My daily morning walks around downtown, during which I not only got exercise and fresh air, but made a point of reaching buildings and monuments familiar to me from my years of writing about SF history.

• Sitting down with local author Kelli Stanley and talking about her efforts to relocate from the United States to Europe; her latest novel, The Reckoning; and how she couldn’t relax at LCC because she needed to get home and finish her sequel to that book by its deadline.

• Chatting up the friendly doorkeepers at the Hyatt Regency and finally questioning them about where to find the best Mexican food in the Mission District. This provoked much debate and research, until they finally directed me to Gallardos at 3248 18th Street (corner of 18th and Shotwell). I took the BART train down to the 16th and Mission station, then walked south on Mission and left on 18th for three more blocks. My being the only white guy in the restaurant suggested authenticity, as did the fact that credit cards weren’t accepted—Gallardos is cash-only. And the food? Well, I ordered the Guadalajara Dinner, a combination plate featuring an enchilada, a chili relleno, and a taco. With a side of house-made tortillas! It was savory and filling, and more than I could eat, but I had no refrigerator in my hotel room to hold the leftovers. I’ll definitely go back there the next time I’m in the Bay Area.

• Finding myself at the hotel bar next to Chicago’s Lori Rader-Day, an hour before Saturday night’s Lefty Awards banquet was to commence. I first met Lori during an airport shuttle ride into Raleigh, North Carolina, for Bouchercon 2015—back when she was just starting her career composing fiction. Since then, she’s produced six more novels, among them this year’s Wreck Your Heart, and survived breast cancer. I have done … well, nothing even remotely so courageous or dramatic. But it was good to catch up for a spell over gin-and-tonics.

• And then after the banquet and prize dispersals, joining Los Angeles author Gary Phillips at that same bar. He told me about the delights of rearing his late daughter’s young child, and briefed me on his soon-forthcoming novel, The Haul, which recounts the story of a professional thief coming out of retirement to engineer “a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker.” Gary and Lori are such kind and generous people; I’m sorry I live so far from them.

When Sunday rolled around, I was not close to being ready for departure. I mused on how wonderful it might be to spend another week roaming San Francisco, just photographing sidewalk scenes and the elegant decorations of old buildings. I hadn’t had a chance during my stay to wander out to spacious Golden Gate Park. Or to hop a Powell-Hyde Cable Car to The Buena Vista café, which is credited with introducing Irish coffees to the United States in 1952. Nor had I stopped at John’s Grill on Ellis Street, where Spade ordered “chops, baked potatoes, [and] sliced tomatoes” in The Maltese Falcon.

But I had to be back home the next day, so couldn’t stay. Next time, I told myself. And next time would be sooner than 15 years off!

Thursday’s “Thoughts on Podcasting” session was moderated by Jaime Parker Stickle (far left), author of the Corey in Los Angeles series and host of The Girl with the Same Name. Tackling the topic with her were Sabrina Thatcher (Slaying the Craft: Inside the Mind of a Thriller Writer), Jim Fusilli (Writers at Work), Mike Adamick (Crime Adjacent), and Dan White (OutWithDan).

“The Liars Panel” on Friday was one of this convention’s more unusual offerings, but its title says it all. Five writers told stories of their encounters with famous people, and the audience was charged with identifying which were factual and which were fabricated. Shown from left to right: Lee Matthew Goldberg (The Great Gimmelmans), Holly West (The Money Block), the legendary Sara Paretsky (creator of the V.I. Warshawski series), Lori Rader-Day (this panel’s moderator), and Lina Chern (Tricks of Fortune).

Guest of Honor Gary Phillips was interviewed onstage Friday afternoon by fellow fictionist Christa Faust (The Get Off). During their engaging 45-minute exchange, Phillips was asked which of all his books he would like to have outlast him. His answer: Violent Spring, his 1994 debut novel (featuring private eye Ivan Monk), and his 1999 standalone, The Jook.

Finally, Lori Rader-Day’s selfie showing the two of us enjoying chilled libations in the Hyatt Regency’s lobby bar.

Nice Work by Nasty Woman

By Linda L. Richards
In some ways, Nasty Woman Press was born almost the moment Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president back in 2016. Award-winning author Kelli Stanley knew something had to be done. But what could one writer—a fiction writer, at that—do in the face of all that she sensed was about to come? Stanley allowed the moment to galvanize her, and she started putting together a crew.

The organization that resulted from all of that galvanizing is a registered non-profit called the Creative Resistance. Members are authors, readers, attorneys, librarians, editors, literary agents, artists, entertainers, publishers, performers, and others. “People who value creativity and imagination. People who value education, the environment, human rights, and a saner, more compassionate world,” says the organization’s Web site. Their imprint takes its name from an insult Trump directed at his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, during a 2016 presidential debate (“such a nasty woman”).

The first book-length publication from this resistance-driven organization drops this week, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Shattering Glass is intended to be the first in a series of anthologies, and if this one is a taste, we have some great reading ahead of us.

The book collects essays, interviews, articles, and short fiction on the stated theme—the empowerment of women—but it really is so much more. A sharp and beautifully rendered window into this cultural moment, crafted by passion and a deep need to try and right, or at least articulate, something that has gone terribly wrong.

And this is just the crew we want to have sharing stellar thoughts not only about but also around this moment in history. Contributors include Heather Graham, Valerie Plame (yes, that Valerie Plame), Sandi Ault, Eric Beetner, Cara Black, Rhys Bowen, former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, Hallie Ephron, Rachael Howzell Hall, Charlaine Harris, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Toni L.P. Kelner, Catriona McPherson, S.J. Rozan, Clea Simon, Alexandra Sokoloff, Kelli Stanley, Kate Thornton, Jacqueline Winspear, and several others. Profits from the sale of this collection will go to Planned Parenthood.

It’s a stunning lineup of authors writing to us from their hearts at an incredible moment in time. Run, don’t walk.

Stanley Steams Ahead

The Kirkus Reviews Web site today carries a good-size chunk of an interview I conducted recently with San Francisco novelist Kelli Stanley, the author of City of Secrets (Minotaur)--her new and second book featuring 1940s San Francisco private eye Miranda Corbie, following last year’s City of Dragons. You’ll find that Kirkus interview here.

* * *

But as I have suggested, there’s more. Only about a third of the exchange I had with Stanley about her work actually made it into Kirkus. So below, I am featuring much of what was left behind. The questions here cover Corbie’s history, the author’s long-standing interest in world’s fairs, and the right-wing hate groups that figure so prominently in City of Secrets.

J. Kingston Pierce: From reading your novels, as well as the Web-posted yarn, “Memory Book,” we know that Miranda Corbie was born in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire and that she’s now a chain-smoking private eye, with an office in the Monadnock Building, on Market Street. But give us some more details of her past, including things you haven’t yet incorporated into the novels.

Kelli Stanley: After college (at Mills College in Oakland) she undertook a number of jobs. One of them was teaching farm workers displaced by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Later, in the mid-’30s, she traveled to New York and met Johnny, a reporter for The New York Times.

He became the love of her life, someone that she could finally trust and give herself to. They traveled to Spain during the Civil War--Miranda trained as a nurse briefly and talked her way in as a volunteer so she could be with John. He was killed in ’37, and she returned to the city of her birth, and drifted into working for Dianne’s Escort Service and Tea Room (an actual business, as most of the businesses are in the series).

Eventually she met Charlie Burnett, a P.I. on the shady side of the street, and worked for him as divorce-case bait. After solving his murder, she was hired by the [San Francisco] world’s fair administration, and secured her own P.I. license. Her second big case (at the world’s fair) involved the Incubator Babies. When she’s not working for herself, she acts as a security guard for Sally Rand’s girls at the infamous Nude Ranch on Treasure Island’s Gayway.

That’s the skeleton of Miranda’s story ... and you’ll notice a lot of gaps. I delve into her history little by little, mostly as it’s revealed to me. The reason for this is simple: when we meet someone for the first time, they don’t come complete with a detailed biography, and I find fictional characters that supply life dossiers to the reader to be unrealistic.

So Miranda--when she first appeared, in City of Dragons--should feel like a 33-year-old woman with a dark past and an uncertain future, at a time in her life when she’s groping for something even she’s not sure about.


A video tour of San Francisco’s 1939-1940 world’s fair

JKP: As you just said, Miranda does part-time work along the Gayway entertainment zone at San Francisco’s 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition. What attracted you to that world’s fair, and why is it a useful part of your novels?

KS: I’ve always been drawn to the idea of a world’s fair ... maybe it’s because I attended Expo 67 in Montreal as a 3-year-old!

They were such spectacular, giant epic events, and so ephemeral--and yet so important in the history of Western culture. They helped spur technological advances like electricity and television, they exposed Middle America to foreign countries and cultures, and they helped shape and define the future. Artists like [Pablo] Picasso and [Georges] Braque, who were heavily influenced by African art, saw it for the first time at a world’s fair, and with that inspiration, of course completely redefined modern art.

They were also grossly racist and colonialist. Historically, world’s fairs were like a cultural Olympics, with each country competing against each other and trying to demonstrate its cultural and political superiority. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, they became a showcase for colonialism, and colonized peoples--along with midgets, dwarves, and people with physical abnormalities--were put on display as a combination trophy/freak show.

Even in 1939/1940, Ripley’s Believe It or Not featured sideshow performers, and a “Midget Village” was a staple on the Gayway.

Miranda’s world’s fair, in other words, represents the tension between the beauty and ugliness of the era I’m writing about, all on a larger-than-life scale. Treasure Island was truly spectacular ... the colored lights at night in fountains of cascading water, the Art Deco statues, the flowers and trees and plants and the Tower of the Sun.

It’s the ideal setting for Miranda, because as much as she’s drawn to the beauty, she’s not blinded by it.

JKP: City of Secrets is a murder mystery, focusing on the slayings of two young women, whose bodies were despoiled after death with anti-Semitic insults. However, the book also ties those crimes in with what were then current, and ugly, themes of “racial hygiene” and eugenics. In your Author’s Note at the front of Secrets, you say that Nero Wolfe creator Rex Stout became a leading defender of human rights and a foe of American fascists before and during World War II. Is that true?

KS: Yes! Isn’t that cool? I had no idea about Stout’s heroism. I mean, we know about [Dashiell] Hammett and what the McCarthyites put him through--but Stout was a committed and fervent anti-fascist.

He was a member of the Friends of Democracy, an organization founded by the Reverend L.M. Birkhead. In the course of researching Birkhead I learned about Stout’s activism. Nero Wolfe’s creator was also on the original Board for the ACLU, and founded the Writers War Board immediately after Pearl Harbor.

[FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover hated him (of course) and thought he was a communist, but the truth is that Stout abhorred totalitarianism of any kind. He was a true liberal.

JKP: While writing City of Secrets, were you conscious of parallels between the rise of American right-wing hate groups in the 1930s and ’40s and similar threats today?

KS: Unfortunately, the similarities are all too apparent.

Right-wing hate groups follow the same pattern today that they did 70 years ago:

• Appeal to middle-class and working-class fears of an “outsider” appropriating power and money--the outsider could be black, Jewish, Chinese, female, gay, Catholic, Irish, Italian, Polish ... just about any category other than male, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant.

• Wrap said appeal in the American flag and proclaim it patriotism, particularly by identifying the cause with the American Revolution ... The Defenders of the Christian Faith and (in City of Secrets) the Musketeers were actual groups.

• Vilify the president (if a Democrat) and refuse to work with the government. Conspiracy theories tend to run amok in these organizations ... a popular corollary to the “Birthers” was the claim that Franklin Roosevelt was “secretly Jewish.”

• Get very, very angry, and recognize no rights other than your own. This is the fundamental difference between true “social conservatives”--like, say, the Amish--and people who want to ram their own, privately held beliefs down everyone else’s throat.

I think that sums it up pretty well. FDR was absolutely loathed by these people, even though New Deal programs helped make it possible for group members to dole out their dollars for hate sheets. FDR represented change--perhaps the greatest change in U.S. government history. For the first time, “for the people” would mean something tangible to the poor.

This scared a lot of people. And corporate fat cats--like Henry Ford and Robert McCormick--wanted to fan the flames of fear and anger, because it helped preserve their power. Ford was a notorious anti-Semite, and of course he hated labor unions.

Not a lot of people know that there was a credible fascist coup plot against FDR in 1933 ... led by wealthy businessmen, including a DuPont.

Perhaps the tragedy of our own era is the lack of real dialogue and willingness to work together. A lack of moderation and tolerance. I respect a healthy difference of opinion, especially if it’s grounded in reason, logic, and good faith. In my opinion, the unwillingness to listen to others is the first step toward political fascism.

As the adage goes, if we don’t remember our history ...

JKP: You allude periodically in your stories to the Incubator Baby Case of 1939 as being important to Miranda Corbie’s career and reputation. Yet I don’t believe you’ve ever told the specifics of that investigation. Will readers ever learn them, or is this going to be like one of those elusive cases so often referred to by Doctor Watson in the Sherlock Holmes tales?

KS: Well, it was certainly not my intention to be a tease! I originally thought I’d write two books “in the middle,” then two that were prequels, then go forward with the sequels. Sort of like Star Wars, though hopefully the prequels would be better!

The two prequels are the Incubator Babies case and the murder of Burnett, Miranda’s old boss. I hope to write them after books three and four. Who knows, maybe I can convince my publisher to make book four one of the prequels! I think they would like the series to be a bit more well-established before I crank out novel-length sequels, though, so that’s the reason for the delay. I’m really looking forward to the Incubator Babies, in particular. I received an e-mail from a reader who actually was an incubator baby at Luna Park, and it was so cool to hear from her!

And, as I mentioned earlier, since we meet Miranda when she’s 33 (and with a dark and complex history), these cases will be mentioned because they were crucial to her career as a PI. As a matter of fact, someone involved with one of those cases plays a role in the third book.

JKP: In City of Secrets, Miranda receives a post card from the mother she never knew, who’s living abroad but wants to see her after so long. How might that affect the plots of future Miranda novels?

KS: Because I continuously research, scenes and events morph and change as the novel develops, and characters do, too. [But] I can tell you that Miranda is obsessed with finding her mother when the [next] book opens.

I mean, think about it: Here’s a woman who’s never known parental love, unconditional love. Who found a person [Johnny] to trust and to depend upon and whom she adored once in her life, only to lose him. She’s never really had a family. Rick and Bente and Alan and Gladys, No-Legs Norris, the girls at Sally’s, Shorty Glick at Midget Village ... her friends have been her only family.

So now she’s handed a mother. She’s excited, terrified, wanting to hope, but not trusting to fate because she has every reason not to. There’s a mystery at the heart of that post card, and that’s also Miranda’s job ... to uncover the truth, to unearth secrets.

One of the biggest mysteries at the core of this series is the discovery of who and what Miranda is. The search for identity is a potent one, hero’s journey aside. I also think it speaks to women in particular, because we are so often defined by our roles in relationships.

Well, Miranda has no real relationship other than a few good friendships. She’s not really a daughter, she’s not a wife. She’s her own woman. And here’s a post card from someone who claims to be her mother, someone of whom she has dim but cherished memories, someone she’s been able to create for herself over time, a kind of fantasy parent.

What if her mother isn’t the kind of person she wants her to be? What if she is? And what if the woman who wrote her isn’t her mother at all?

JKP: Finally, I think it’s interesting that, in the dedication to City of Secrets, you mention that your own mother, Patricia, is your “best friend.” Not every daughter can say the same thing about her mother. What makes your relationship with Patricia so special?

KS: First, thank you for reading the dedication!

Motherhood is one of the themes of City of Secrets ... it’s filtered throughout the novel, both in the main case and within Miranda’s personal life. I wanted to dedicate this particular book to my mom, because she is, to me, the ideal mother, my greatest friend and source of wisdom, and because she’s fighting cancer.

My mom is truly a special person. My father once said she’s the “kind of person who makes flowers grow.” That’s a beautiful thought, and very true about Mom.

As an only child, I’m very close to my parents, and Mom and I have an incredibly strong daughter-mother bond. We’ve been through so much together ... we owned a business (a comic-book store) [and] traveled together whenever we could. Mom has always loved me unconditionally and has supported me in whatever I wanted to do. She’s a gentle person who is loyal, and only gets angry over social and political injustices or if her family is threatened. She’s also extremely strong, patient, and just, I don’t know ... pure of heart, I guess. She spends most of her time trying to help other people.

She’s currently on chemotherapy for cancer, and recently fractured her hip. But she still wanted to come to Bouchercon [in St. Louis] with me. She routinely sells my books to every medical person she meets while she’s being treated. That’s my mom. I only wish Miranda (and everyone else I know) had a mom like mine.

READ MORE: “Kelli Stanley’s City of Secrets” (My Book, the Movie).

Bear in Mind

While we await the imminent publication of her second Miranda Corbie private-eye novel, City of Secrets, San Francisco author Kelli Stanley this week welcomed the online publication of “Memory Book,” a sequel to both Secrets and its predecessor, the historical thriller City of Dragons.

You can read “Memory Book” at the Criminal Element Web site.

Hills of Homicide: The Mysteries of San Francisco -- Movies

(Editor’s note: We asked Kelli Stanley, the San Francisco author of City of Dragons [2010] and an admitted film noir obsessive, to name her favorite noirs set in her hometown. She sent back the article below.)

1. The Maltese Falcon (1941). OK, so it wasn’t really filmed here. Still, it feels authentic. During your Bouchercon visit to San Francisco you can stop by Dashiell Hammett Street, right by the spot where Sam Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, meets his end. And there’s Don Herron’s fabulous Hammett tour, too. And of course, The Maltese Falcon is a seminal noir, faithful almost to the letter to author Hammett’s 1930 novel, with a superb cast (including Sydney Greenstreet in his first film role). It is arguably the best adaptation of any private-eye novel ever.

2. Vertigo (1958). I didn’t get it when I was in my 20s. Too baroque, too outré, too ridiculous ... but Vertigo is a film I’ve come to better understand and savor with each passing year. As a fever-dream of obsession--and a metaphor for the fear of death, which makes the age difference between Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak all the more richly textured--and as a garishly colored, hallucinatory, San Francisco-set noir, it stands unique. It’s also the most powerful personal testimony to director Alfred Hitchcock’s genius. Watch for scenes shot at Fort Point, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and Mission Dolores.

3. Nora Prentiss (1947). If you subscribe to the most piquant definition of noir---about the characters being “fucked from page one”--then translate that sentiment into a black-and-white melodrama, the kind usually starring Joan Crawford (see below) ... add in San Francisco and Ann Sheridan, with cinematography by James Wong Howe and direction by Vincent Sherman ... the result will be Nora Prentiss. This picture also perfectly captures the honky-tonk atmosphere of the old Fisherman’s Wharf ... which you can still sense on an occasional Friday night, when the Bay wind floats a rich combination of fresh crab, beer, and desperation in just the right proportions. Not yet available on DVD, but be sure to watch for this film on TCM.

4. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). Rita Hayworth. Orson Welles. The movie that ended in divorce for Welles and Hayworth, and not just because he sadistically made her cut her hair and dye it blond.

Exterior shots of Playland-at-the-Beach, the fabled but unfortunately long-gone Coney Island of San Francisco, and a brilliant, much-imitated last scene in the amusement park’s Hall of Mirrors (embedded at left). The classic Steinhart Aquarium. And shots of Welles running through Chinatown and Portsmouth Square (with a visit to the old Hall of Justice). Watch especially for the scene on Grant Avenue where he passes by the Li Po bar. That place is still there, and not long ago hosted Dominic Stansberry and I for a reading of Subterranean Noir through the auspices of City Lights Bookstore and Peter Maravelis, the editor of San Francisco Noir.

5. Thieves’ Highway (1949). Richard Conte could portray heroes and villains with equal panache, but his role here is arguably his best (with Mr. Brown in The Big Combo coming in a close second). San Francisco’s waterfront Produce Market--where part of the action is set--is now long gone, and Thieves’ Highway is a lasting testament to the city’s pre-suburb days. It’s also a stirring reminder--from the sublime Jules Dassin (director) and A.I. “Buzz” Bezzerides (writer)--about the labor struggles behind bringing an apple to market. You won’t ever look at your Granny Smith in quite the same way again.

6. Sudden Fear (1952). Joan Crawford, Gloria Grahame, and Jack Palance--what a cast! One of the best proto-feminist noirs around, Sudden Fear, like most of Crawford’s noirs, is what they used to call a “woman’s picture.” It’s

suspenseful and deliciously played by all, and you’ll enjoy authentic shots of the city from Nob Hill mansions to Art Deco apartments. Go, Joan, go!

7. Dark Passage (1947). If you’re lucky, you’ll get to ride the very cable car Humphrey Bogart did when he and Lauren Bacall were filming. And of course, there’s the fabulous Telegraph Hill apartment where La Bacall lives ... and the memorable scene in which she drives an old wood-sided station wagon through the Golden Gate Bridge toll lane (everything looks exactly the same, but the price is considerably higher nowadays). If you do happen to cross the bridge, look to your right (heading north) when paying your toll, and you’ll see a round building. That used to be a restaurant in the 1930s and is currently a gift shop. (Watch a scene from Dark Passage above.)

8. D.O.A. (1950). A fun B-movie with some bizarre touches (such as the sound effects in the hotel when Edmond O’Brien is “on the make”), D.O.A. is also a great record of 1950 San Francisco and Los Angeles. Watch for O’Brien’s run down Market Street.

9. The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950). If you’re intrigued by Fort Point after watching Vertigo, by all means try this film. It’s a tight, well-paced little noir, with some fantastic scenes filmed at San Francisco’s Civil War-era fortress, directly beneath the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge. You’ll also get to see Spock’s mother (Jane Wyatt) play a femme fatale. And she’s got a cool house on Sea Cliff!

10. Woman on the Run (1950). Ann Sheridan strikes again, this time with Dennis O’Keefe. This is a fabulous, low-budget film shot mostly on location here, except for the scenes supposedly taking place at Playland-at-the-Beach. You will, however, get a close-up of Laughing Sal, whom you can still meet (and who apparently terrorized generations of children who saw her at Playland). Just head down to Pier 45 and walk into the magic of the Musée Méchanique.

Honorable Mentions
Devotees of the genre may note that I have failed to include Out of the Past (1947) on this list. Although it’s one of my favorite noirs, the supposedly San Francisco locations are not altogether believable (unlike those in The Maltese Falcon and even Nora Prentiss), which is why I’ve skipped it. Other films to enjoy:

• The Lineup (1958), which includes a lengthy scene at the long-ago-demolished Sutro Baths, and a great car chase through the city--just about completely accurate, too!
• Experiment in Terror (1962). Lee Remick drives across the Bay Bridge and we visit George Washington High School in the Richmond district.
• The House on Telegraph Hill (1951). Sadly, Julius’ Castle--the famous restaurant on the Hill--has been closed since 2008.
• Impact (1949), offering many shots of Nob Hill and environs.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t call attention to a helpful, pocket-sized paperback called San Francisco Noir (2005), by Nathaniel Rich. While you may disagree with his inclusion of a few films (Dirty Harry, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), the book is extremely well-researched and includes addresses from many of the locales in his list of films.

If you’re interested in film noir and haven’t joined the Film Noir Foundation, please check it out. Founded by Noir Czar (and this year’s Bouchercon Toastmaster) Eddie Muller, the FNF helps preserve films such as these from further deterioration and eventual loss.

The Story Behind the Story: “City of Dragons,” by Kelli Stanley

(Editor’s note: For the latest installment of our “Story Behind the Story” series, we invited San Francisco author Kelli Stanley to explain the background of her second novel, City of Dragons--the first book in a new series--which is being released today by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur Books. Set in 1940 San Francisco, the work introduces Miranda Corbie, a 33-year-old private investigator, former Spanish Civil War nurse, and erstwhile escort, who gets mixed up in the murder of a small-time numbers runner. All while anticipating the reopening of her city’s latest world’s fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition. Fellow novelist George Pelecanos calls City of Dragons “big and ambitious, both reverent and original,” while Linda Fairstein says, “Stanley’s dialogue bristles with attitude, the atmosphere is as thick as bay fog, and her protagonist is a great new dame in crime fiction.” In addition to penning fiction, Stanley is a film and old radio buff, and blogs at Writing in the Dark.)

I guess you could say that City of Dragons feels like the book I was born to write. I can at least tell you that a good part of my life has been spent in preparation for it.

My first novel, Nox Dormienda (A Long Night for Sleeping) (2008), drew upon some knowledge I had gained from an expensive education and a lot of years in academia, and fused it with an abiding affection for the rhythms of mid-20th-century noir, as developed by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and other writers of the hard-boiled pulps. I’m thrilled that I get to continue that series with Minotaur Books; it makes me feel better about the pile of student loans still in my files. But I always planned to mainline the noir tradition, to tackle the actual pulp-fiction era, to grapple with the stereotypes that it created and that are still with us, and to distill it all into something that is purely my own.

The past is problematic for American culture. We tend to glamorize it, own it, categorize it, and file it away as “been there, done that”--if anybody thinks about it at all. But for some reason that has nothing to do with anything other than kismet, I’ve always been drawn to the 1930s and ’40s--even as a child. I wrote a play at age 8 in which the gangster antihero dies, after trying to heroically save the French spy with whom he’s in love. And no, this was before I saw Raw Deal or even Casablanca.

I knew who Jimmy Cagney was. I devoured a fondly remembered magazine called Nostalgia Illustrated every month when I was 10, and listened to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, as well as rebroadcasts of classic shows such as Inner Sanctum and Suspense and The Shadow. I’d buy my 50-cent copies of the big DC 100-Page Super Spectaculars, and relished reading the adventures of Golden Age superheroes like Doctor Fate and Alias the Spider. During the relatively short time I lived in the suburbs of San Jose, California, I’d race home from school to catch the Dialing for Dollars movie on KTVU--usually something from the ’30s or ’40s. No cartoons for me, except, of course, for Bugs Bunny on Saturday mornings.

My point is that I was preternaturally drawn to this era, and the fascination stayed with me through adulthood. I gave three cheers for the VCR, when it finally made its appearance in the Jurassic age of personalized entertainment, and my repertoire of film knowledge made me a whiz at certain questions on Jeopardy and while playing Trivial Pursuit. And for many years, this, well, obsession--it sort of floated in the backdrop, a part of who I was and am, without any practical application or way to share it.

Life took me to different places, and let me try different ways to make a living. Survival is always the foremost task in front of us, and I survived as a comic-book store owner for a while, and worked as an employment counselor. I even sold advertising for an escort service--go figure. Who knew they needed to advertise?

Eventually I found my way back to school, and finished my education with two BAs and a Master’s Degree in Classics. At the same time, I wrote. Nothing novel-length, though I did pen a few screenplays. A lot of poetry, nothing serious or at least publishable. Well, actually, my entry for an Ernest Hemingway writing contest was pretty funny.

While in graduate school I first conceived of the idea of writing a mystery. I always loved mysteries--traditional, too, though I knew Bogey before I knew Christie. But I also wanted to write about Rome, not as “historical fiction,” but as noir--as a thriller--as something raw and in your face but at the same time accessible and, well, fun. And then on one fateful night during Noir City, the annual San Francisco film festival hosted by Noir Czar Eddie Muller, it struck me that I could just damn well write Rome like a translator, not an encyclopedist. The history would be accurate, and there would be no anachronistic similes allowed, but the voice would be an homage to the noir rhythms I hear in my dreams. And that, folks, is how “Roman noir” came to be.

Nox led me directly to City of Dragons. I was out of school, faced with an uncertain future. And with the support of my family, I decided to cross my own Rubicon and try to make a career of writing. I knew I’d need a new series to break into a major publisher and thus have a better chance at surviving on what I could make as a writer.

Because of the long lead time to publication (I was notified in January 2007 about the scheduling of Nox’s release in July 2008), I was able to take the plunge and educate myself about the wonderful world of publishing and think about what to tackle next. One of my areas of interest is world’s fairs, particularly the two expositions (one in New York, the other in San Francisco) that were held in 1939. I’m a collector of all kinds of things--from comic books to cocktail ware--and I’ve amassed a good assortment of ephemera, postcards, menus, guidebooks, etc. from San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE). So I thought I’d try my hand at a series set on manmade Treasure Island, featuring a female private eye.

Flash forward to Bouchercon 2007, in Anchorage, Alaska. My first Bouchercon, my first major conference. And it hit like lightning. Many amazing feelings and thoughts and all kinds of energy came out of that event (not to mention a chance to meet future Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin--which I passed up, by the way). I came home, determined to start the next series, and to make it real, to make it not only about the past that I loved, but the past I deplored. It wouldn’t be a nostalgia-infused neo-noir extravaganza, but a straight-on recognition of the beauty and the horrors and the heroes and the villains, and most of all, the gray life in between. And I wanted to make it an ode, a valentine to the City of Hearts, San Francisco, one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me.

I still thought it would take place on Treasure Island during the fair, which operated for two summers, in 1939 and ’40. But during the course of research--actually, while reading one of the picture-laden Arcadia volumes on different districts in San Francisco--I found some photos from a Rice Bowl Party in Chinatown.

This was a three-day outdoor party, held during Chinese New Year celebrations--back when such things as three-day parties were possible. The entire city gave itself over to Chinatown, with parades and fashion shows, and auctions and dancing and street carnivals and fireworks--until the wee hours, every night. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and a chance to close down the city and walk around drunk, all while ostensibly raising money for Chinese war relief.

At the same time, I discovered how many Japanese-American businesses were based in Chinatown ... and how the Chinese community had organized boycotts against Japanese goods and stores during the last Sino-Japanese War. And I thought, what must have it been like to be Japanese and living in Chinatown after 1937 and the horrific Rape of Nanking?

I remember that moment. I remember the feeling that poured over me, and I knew that this was the place for me to start. Treasure Island and the GGIE would play a part--my protagonist, Miranda Corbie, would work there at the midway (or Gayway, as it was labeled), protecting fan dancer and actress Sally Rand and her girls at the notorious Nude Ranch during the season. But the first book in my series would open off-season, during the Rice Bowl Party of 1940. And with the murder of a young Japanese numbers runner.

I subsequently wrote a Treasure Island-set short-story prequel to City of Dragons, called “Children’s Day,” that will be published in the next International Thriller Writers anthology, First Thrills: High-Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Writers, edited by Lee Child and due out from Forge this coming June. And a chunk of my second Miranda Corbie novel, which I’m still writing, is set on Treasure Island as well.

There are other themes in City of Dragons: my obvious love for the San Francisco setting, and a tribute to Hammett in both the staging of a murder at the neo-Gothic Pickwick Hotel and a brief scene at John’s Grill (where Sam Spade stopped in The Maltese Falcon to refuel himself with an “order of chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes”). My new novel will be published just a couple of weeks before the 80th anniversary of The Maltese Falcon’s original publication--which happens to coincide with both Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year on February 14.

I’ve also tried to write a response to the stereotypical view of a beautiful woman as the eternally evil object, the amoral yet fascinating femme fatale. Miranda uses her face and body to make a living as a detective. She’s also a former escort. She’s an object in a world that continually objectifies her. So she uses her weapons on her own terms and for her own purposes, and she’s tough as hell because she’s had to be. If she doesn’t look out for herself, who will?

City of Dragons is the culmination of many dreams ... childhood plays and George Raft movies and lyrical prose and staccato rhythms. Of hats and bourbon and Chesterfield cigarettes in the midst of the most horrifying atrocities the world has witnessed. Of what it means to be a woman at any age and any time, and what the past might have been without a censor to view it through. It’s a love letter to San Francisco and noir … and I hope you enjoy it.

READ MORE: “Kelli Stanley: From Small Press to Big Success,” by Heather Moore (Writing on the Wall).

The Book You Have to Read: “Nightmare Alley,” by William Lindsay Gresham

(Editor’s note: This is the 71st installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s pick has been made by Kelli Stanley, a San Francisco author, film noir fan, and comic book buff. Her debut novel and first Roman Noir, Nox Dormienda [A Long Night for Sleeping], won the Bruce Alexander Memorial Mystery Award. Her second book, City of Dragons, is a private-eye tale set in 1940 San Francisco. It’s due out from Thomas Dunne/Minotaur Books in February 2010. When not penning novels or listening to old-time radio shows, Stanley composes a blog called Writing in the Dark.)

If noir is the stuff of nightmares--you know what I mean, the kind in which (according to the popular conference definition of the genre) you’re fucked from page one--then a one-off, nearly forgotten classic called Nightmare Alley is surely the biggest freak show of them all.

And I mean that literally. Nightmare Alley, written by William Lindsay Gresham, concerns itself with the twilight world of the carnival, the huckster, the super-slick salesman of the three shell con, all grifting a living--and sometimes better than a living--off the hopes, dreams, fears, and delusions of middle-class, corn-fed America.

Now, I’ve got this thing for carnivals. The black magic way they just appear on the edges--parking lots, small towns, aging strip malls--always, it seems, at twilight. The heady mixture of the barked come-on, the pitch, the rigged games, and the smells of hot dogs and popcorn and stale cotton candy. And the thrill rides ... screaming teens, no inhibitions. Secret assignations, stolen moments. Everything gone with the dawn.

My fascination with carnivals and their ephemeral, disturbing, chaotic, and ultimately transfiguring effect on mainstream society was one reason why I wanted to set a novel at San Francisco’s 1939/1940 world’s fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition. World’s fairs sport a midway--the one mounted on manmade Treasure Island, in San Francisco Bay, was called the Gayway, long before that tag would become an obvious pun. My short story “Children’s Day,” which will be published in the next International Thriller Writers’ anthology, First Thrills (due out in June 2010 from Tor), is a prequel to my forthcoming novel, City of Dragons, and is set on Treasure Island. And while the action in City of Dragons itself takes place during the off-season of that exposition, the Rice Bowl Party at the heart of that story is a three-day-and-night street carnival, complete with games of chance, the odors of sweat and peanuts, and a mind-reader named Madame Pengo--a small homage to Nightmare Alley.

Gresham’s book is sumptuous, rich, redolent, and literary. Fused with a classically tragic structure, the plot and characters roil and roll in your head, guests who will never leave. In some ways, it’s a bitter, cynical take on the Horatio Alger myth, a commentary on the Americans America left behind.

Stan Carlisle is a bright boy. He hooks up with a traveling carnival, and learns the tricks of the trade as a sideshow “mentalist”--how to read faces, how to memorize code, how to exploit his natural bent for theatricality. He uses whomever he has to in order to better his position. Stan possesses intelligence, ambition, good looks, and something more--a true talent for communicating with people, for persuading them. To know what the little lady would like and the ability to give it to her ... the power to charm the marshal into not closing down the fleabag flea circus he’s made his home:

“How’d you know I got a daughter?”

Stan rolled the silks into a ball and they vanished. His face was serious, the blue eyes grave. “I know many things, Marshal. I don’t know exactly how I know them, but there’s nothing supernatural about it, I am sure. My family was Scotch, and the Scotch are often gifted with powers that the old folks used to call ‘second sight.’”

The white head, with its coarse, red face, nodded involuntarily.

But Stan’s not satisfied with playing the sticks. He steps on a few people, causes trouble, exploits a woman named Zeena, and is torn between fascination and disgust at the spectacle of the alcoholic geek, the lowest of the low, the man who--for a bottle of cheap whiskey--will bite the heads off squirming live chickens and degrade himself to a subhuman status.

Eventually, Stan makes the big time, becoming a slick and successful spiritual advisor to the gullible, emotionally vulnerable and--of course--wealthy patrons who can make him the real bucks.

For a while, of course.

It would spoil the book to reveal any more. Gresham’s style sometimes veers from third-person to inner monologue, a feverishly close point of view that propels the drama:

Groping in the dark he found it, lying on its side there was still a drink in it oh Jesus I got to get out of here before they see this room ...

And “cards,” not chapters, divide the novel’s text, each section named for a tarot card and provided with a pertinent quote. Card I, for example, is The Fool: “who walks in motley, with his eyes closed, over a precipice at the end of the world.”

What makes Nightmare Alley even more of a nightmare is the temptation to see the author in these lines. Gresham was born in Baltimore in 1909, moved to New York, graduated from high school, and volunteered as a medic for the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. He came back in ’39 a damaged man and ravaged soul. Yet another personal point of interest for me, as Miranda Corbie--the protagonist of City of Dragons--volunteered as a nurse in that conflict in the same year, and later finds work as an escort.

For Gresham, the world was a downward spiral. He contracted tuberculosis and tried to commit suicide. He eventually married poet, radical communist, and former child prodigy Joy Davidman, and found work writing for the pulps. Gresham became an alcoholic and an abusive husband and father, which led Joy into a relationship to and marriage with English writer C.S. Lewis--a relationship later dramatized in the play and subsequent films, Shadowlands.

Nightmare Alley was published in 1946; Limbo Tower, Gresham’s only other novel--another noir, set in a TB ward--in ’49. He eventually penned a book about magician and escapologist Harry Houdini as well as a non-fiction look at the lives of carnies (Monster Midway, 1954), but years of hard living took their toll. He started to lose his sight, then developed cancer of the tongue. And finally, in 1952, he returned to the Dixie Hotel in Manhattan, where he’d written his first and greatest novel, Nightmare Alley ... and took an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 52.

In 1947, Nightmare Alley was fortunate enough to be made into one of the greatest of all film noirs. Starring a terrific Tyrone Power (if you don’t think he could act, you’re in for a surprise) and a strong supporting cast which included the lovely ingénue Colleen Gray, Joan Blondell, and noir stalwarts Mike Mazurki and Helen Walker, the movie is available on DVD. Rent it soon and often, or better yet buy a copy. With a crackling good script by Jules Furthman (The Shanghai Gesture, The Big Sleep), and atmospherically directed by Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel, The Old Maid--we can only wish he’d been given more crime films), Nightmare Alley is a rare example of a movie almost as good as its source material.

Both the film and novel have been dark inspirations for my own work, and I appreciate The Rap Sheet for giving me the opportunity to share them with you! And I promise you this: You’ll never use the word “geek” without William Lindsay Gresham’s novel brushing through your mind ...

So step right up, ladies and gents, for only one thin dime, right this way--don’t crowd the ladies, children, make some room, make some room!--only one thin dime, and Zeena will tell your past--your present--your future ... in Nightmare Alley!

READ MORE: “100 Years Down Nightmare Alley: A Carnival Noir,” by Craig McDonald; “Paperback Writers: Nightmare Noir,” by Richard Rayner (Los Angeles Times); “The Carny Novel Calls. Lucky Thing It Also E-mails,” by Charles Ardai (Criminal Element).