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.

That Darn Bird Again, With Bonuses

I have mentioned before that Max Allan Collins has an excellent new book due for release from Hard Case Crime on January 6, 2026. Titled Return of the Maltese Falcon, it is of course a sequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon—his only novel featuring San Francisco private eye Sam Spade. But as it turns out, two occasional contributors to The Rap Sheet have an expanded edition of Hammett’s 1929 tale set for release on the very same day Collins’ yarn hits stores.

Expanded in what respect? Well, according to Northern California author Mark Coggins, creator of the August Riordan series, the hardcover version of The Maltese Falcon coming from Berkeley-based publisher Poltroon Press (shown at right) will feature not only the entirety of Hammett’s original story, but as a coda, a couple of Falcon sequels that Coggins produced and published recently in Eclectica Magazine. In the following note, he explains what motivated him to continue Spade’s adventures:

For a crime-fiction devotee like me, some stories never really end. They live in your head, the characters prowling the foggy streets of your imagination long after you’ve turned the final page. For me, and I suspect for many of you, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is chief among them. Sam Spade’s characterization of the black bird as “the stuff that dreams are made of” in the John Huston film is one of the all-time great last lines,* but it leaves a tantalizing question hanging in the air: What happened to the real falcon?

This year, I got the chance to answer that question for myself. When the copyright for Hammett’s masterpiece expired in January 2025, it felt like a door creaked open, inviting a new generation of writers to step into Spade’s world. I didn't hesitate. I sat down and penned a short story, “Mockingbird,” that picks up right where the novel left off, sending Spade back into the labyrinthine hunt for the genuine, jewel-encrusted bird. I’m happy to say the story found a home in Eclectica.

Writing new fiction in a world as richly realized as Hammett’s San Francisco is no small task. Authenticity is everything. My guiding star was Don Herron’s indispensable book, The Dashiell Hammett Tour. It’s a brilliant field guide to the city Hammett knew and wrote about.

To that I added some of my own research. Herron, for example, notes that the novel places gunman Floyd Thursby’s hotel on “Geary near Leavenworth” but doesn’t pinpoint a specific establishment. Armed with a 1928 San Francisco city directory, I went hunting. One establishment stood out as the most likely candidate: the Geary Inn Hotel at 725 Geary. Today, it’s called the Hotel Luz. I reached out to the current owner who told me that a writer who had been a tenant of his had independently come to the very same conclusion.

Once “Mockingbird” was finished, I didn’t let up. A second tale, “The Russian Egg,” followed immediately, continuing Spade’s quest. It was also published in Eclectica Magazine.

Beyond those Falcon follow-ups, Poltroon’s forthcoming edition will include Coggins’ black-and-white photographs of modern-day San Francisco, introducing each chapter. And the shot used on the cover? It’s of the alley where Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, was murdered. “One of the marvels of Hammett’s work,” says Coggins, “is how tangible his city remains. You can still stand outside Spade’s apartment building at 891 Post, look up at his office windows in the old Hunter-Dulin Building at 111 Sutter, and even walk into John’s Grill on Ellis Street and order the same meal he ate: ‘chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes.’ My photos will capture these enduring locations, bridging the nearly 100-year gap between his world and ours.”

Randal S. Brandt, who writes The Rap Sheet’s “Book Into Film” column and is curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, has prepared a new introduction for this edition. And the dust jacket will include a “mapback” showing crime-scene locations from both Hammett’s novel and Coggins’ stories.

All in all, this sounds like a volume that belongs on my shelves—right next to Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon.

* The actual last line is “Huh?” spoken by Detective Sergeant Tom Polhaus in response to Spade’s remark.

Of Spade, Scarlet, and Spies

• Back in July, San Francisco Bay-area author Mark Coggins published a short story in Eclectica magazine titled “Mockingbird,” which revitalized Dashiell Hammett’s best-recognized shamus, Sam Spade, and sent him chasing once more after the elusive bejeweled Maltese falcon. Now, Coggins is back with “The Russian Egg,” appearing in the October/November edition of Eclectica. Picking up where “Mockingbird” left off, it finds the “hard and shifty” Spade being employed by Rhea Gutman, supposedly the daughter of the late and corpulent criminal Casper Gutman, one of the principal antagonists in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1930). She wants him to find a different missing treasure: a Fabergé egg, once the property of Russian Dowager Empress Maria, which, like the falcon, may also have been smuggled into California, and may have drawn the covetous notice of real-life former U.S. senator James D. Phelan. Coggins’ two yarns—best read back to back—have Spade being threatened and shot at by guns; taking what turns out to be a deadly ferry ride; dining on broiled sturgeon steak with mushroom sauce at the now-famous Tadich Grill; and rolling far too many cigarettes to ensure his continued health. They provide a welcome opportunity to renew our acquaintance with a private eye who made a scant four appearances in Hammett’s fiction—in Falcon and three subsequent short stories.

• By the way, note that the “pale and petite” Rhea Gutman makes an early appearance, too, in Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon, due out from Hard Case Crime in January 2026. I already have a copy of that 224-page novel, but haven’t yet read it, preferring to wait until one day (soon) when I can truly savor the experience. Meanwhile, I’m thinking it might be fun to re-read Joe Gores’ Spade & Archer, his 2009 prequel to The Maltese Falcon.

• One more Spade-related item: In his blog, Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West, Evan Lewis features a program guide by one Elizabeth McLeod that recounts how Hammett’s “blond Satan” of a gumshoe became an old-time radio star.

• Season 6 of the Victorian-era sleuth series Miss Scarlet—formerly Miss Scarlet and the Duke—starring Kate Phillips and Tom Durant-Pritchard, will make its broadcast debut as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup on Sunday, January 11, 2026 (though PBS Passport members can begin streaming its half-dozen episodes on December 7). The Masterpiece Web site offers a few “first-look images” to tantalize the show’s longtime fans.

• From now through April 6, 2026, Oxford, England’s Bodleian Libraries are hosting “Tradecraft,” an exhibition based on the late author John le Carré’s private archive that “offers unique insights into the working methods of the writer who shaped the modern spy novel. ‘Tradecraft’ is a word le Carré used to describe the techniques of espionage, but it might also be applied to his own skilled craft as a writer and social commentator.” Among the materials spanning le Carré’s life are “research, drafts, and corrections for his novels, non-fiction, and adaptations, as well as personal correspondence. Highlights include annotated manuscripts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Constant Gardener, and The Little Drummer Girl; previously unseen family photographs; original sketches and watercolour paintings; and letters to fans and friends.”

• For Spybrary, Shane Whaley interviews professor Federico Varese and Dr. Jessica Douthwaite, who co-curated “Tradecraft.” A write-up on the Web site explains that “They explore how the exhibit reveals le Carré’s working methods, personal life, and research habits. From manuscript drafts and scribbles on hotel stationery to his mother’s abandoned suitcase, the conversation explores how le Carré meticulously researched his books, how he conceives characters like George Smiley, and what the curators hope visitors take away.”

• Author talks worth checking out: Sarah DiVello fires questions at Walter Mosley about his latest book, Gray Dawn; Jeffrey James Higgins chats with Reed Farrel Coleman (Sleepless City); Chicago Review of Books’ Lori Rader-Day quizzes Jake Hinkson on the subject of his brand-new novel of “dirtbag decisions,” You Will Never See Me; and with Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper, Julia Kelly discusses her Evelyne Redfern series (A Dark and Deadly Journey, etc.).

• Finally, congratulations are in order for two blogs prominent on my radar. “Puzzle Doctor” Steve Barge celebrates 15 years of helming In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, while Peter Hanson counts the same number of years writing Every ’70s Movie.

Yet Another Spade Showing

We last heard from longtime friend of the site Mark Coggins, the creator of series private eye August Riordan, earlier this year, after his surprising acquisition of Raymond Chandler’s Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter. But he contacted us again this week, to say he has a new short story available that connects him to yet another prominent developer of American detective fiction:

The Maltese Falcon [1930], by Dashiell Hammett, entered the public domain on January 1st of this year. This means that other authors are free to take the character of Sam Spade and the story of the Falcon and run with it. In fact, crime-fiction publisher Hard Case Crime has already announced plans to release Return of the Maltese Falcon, by Max Allan Collins, in January of 2026. The new book promises to pick up “where legendary author Dashiell Hammett left off, telling the story of iconic private eye Sam Spade and the quest for the priceless Maltese Falcon.”

I, like Collins, have long had a fascination with the book, and I, too, have been interested in trying my hand at a Sam Spade story. I’m pleased to announce that my attempt at such a story, “Mockingbird,” has been published in the July/August 2025 issue of Eclectica Magazine. You can read it here.

Collins and I share the same middle name (mine being spelled “Alan”) and have the same initials (MAC). Even our last names are pretty damn similar, so perhaps it’s fitting we both took a whack at answering the question, “What happen to the Falcon?”

Mark mentions that he is currently working on another Spade investigation—“a sequel to a sequel, if you will”—tentatively titled “The Russian Egg.” We look forward to reading that tale as well, perhaps while we await the release of Collins’ Return.

Mending the Master’s Machine

Author Mark Coggins recently explained on this page how he had acquired Raymond Chandler’s last typewriter, a very elegant Olivetti. More recently, on his own Web site, he posted more information about that machine, including these two interesting tidbits:

Raymond Chandler, one of the progenitors of American hard-boiled detective novel, wrote on an Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter from cerca 1955 until his death in 1959, a period that included composition of his last published novel, Playback (1958), the last Philip Marlowe short story, titled variously, “Marlowe Takes On the Syndicate”, “Wrong Pigeon”, “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case” or “The Pencil” (1959), and the first few pages of an unfinished novel with the working title The Poodle Springs Story, later completed by Robert B. Parker as Poodle Springs at the request of the Chandler estate in 1989. …

The machine owned by Chandler—a Series I—was most likely purchased in the UK, most likely in 1955. I base my conclusion for the year and country of purchase on the fact that Chandler made a trip there in 1955 after his wife Cissy passed, and the fact that there is a key on the machine for the UK pound symbol. There is also a key for the dollar sign, but it is not in the usual place above the number 4. In any case, the machine could not have been purchased earlier than 1953 because its serial number, 788236, is in the range of machines that were manufactured that year.

You can enjoy Mark’s entire post here.

Old Tech Becomes New Treasure

Have you ever fantasized about owning something that once belonged to Raymond Chandler? One of his typewriters, for instance?

Well, that’s exactly what Northern California novelist Mark Coggins, creator of the August Riordan private eye series, bought during a recent sale of Chandler estate goods managed by the distinguished auction house Doyle New York. Among the array of items being offered were books once owned by the creator of Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, along with his letters, jewelry, fan mail, postcards, scripts for the 1959-1960 Marlowe TV series, Chandler’s unpublished drafts of fantasy stories, and a 1957 poem the author wrote about a poodle lost in Palm Springs, California. Plus, of course, that aforementioned typewriter: the Olivetti Studio 44 model on which Chandler reportedly composed his final novel, 1958’s Playback.

(Right) Chandler’s Olivetti, loaded with a Playback quote. (Click the image to enlarge.)

The auction took place this last December 6, and included bidders both on site at Doyle’s in Manhattan and others connected to the rapid-fire proceedings electronically or by phone. Coggins—who participated online, with a live video feed—was interested in more than just Chandler’s Olivetti, but didn’t figure to actually walk away with any of the items up for bid. So, he says, “I was completely shocked to have won [the typewriter], because the original auction estimate was $10,000 to $20,000, and I didn’t expect to be in the hunt at those prices.” Yet, luck turned in his favor. “I’m very pleased and strangely honored to be the steward of the machine, at least for a time,” he adds.

Doyle’s official description of this Olivetti reads:

A tan, full-size portable Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter, manufactured circa 1953 and acquired by Chandler shortly thereafter, held in its red original travel case with handle, the 44-key keyboard with keys likely special ordered by Chandler to include the foreign accent marks on the far right, including a “caret” (excellent with languages, Chandler frequently wrote in French). Some light wear to the typewriter which has not been tested for full functionality; the cover detached at hinges, other wear to case. Offered with a red and black ribbon acquired later.

Said auction write-up goes on to explain that “While Chandler had previously owned an Underwood, he was quite pleased with his new Olivetti, writing: ‘I am apt to get up around 4am, take a mild drink of Scotch and water and start hammering at this lovely Olivetti 44, which is far superior to anything we turn out in America. It is a heavy portable and put together like an Italian racing car, and you mustn't judge it from my typing’ (Raymond Chandler, 21 May 1955). Clearly, Chandler took his typewriter seriously and used it nearly every day, preferring blue ribbons to traditional black.”

Coggins—who in addition to his fiction-writing, contributes occasional articles to The Rap Sheet—tells us that he knew on December 6 he had won Chandler’s mechanical prize, but “I was out of town for almost two months. I had it shipped to a friend’s house and only recently picked it up.” In this period when he’s still aglow with his new acquisition, we decided to ask him a few questions about his longstanding interest in Raymond Chandler, how the Doyle’s auction worked, what became of this Olivetti after the author’s demise in 1959, and what plans he has for it in the near future.

J. Kingston Pierce: Do you remember when you first started reading Raymond Chandler’s work? And how did his stories affect you?

Mark Coggins: I remember it distinctly. It was my sophomore year in college [at California’s Stanford University]. I was introduced to him when the instructor of my first creative-writing course read from The Big Sleep to illustrate how certain writers have a very distinctive voice. He also read a parody of Chandler by Woody Allen to show how a style that distinctive could be imitated.

I didn’t know anything about Chandler, and I absolutely loved what I heard. I went to the school bookstore and got all of his books. Then I read there was this guy named Hammett who was Chandler’s predecessor, so I got all of his, too. By the time I took my next class, I was chomping at the bit to write a hard-boiled P.I. story of my own.

The punchline of this anecdote is that the instructor was Tobias Wolff. His first published short story, “Smokers,” came out in The Atlantic Monthly in the middle of our class. Much later, I attended a signing of his for his novel Old School and he told me he didn’t even like Chandler.

JKP: Did Chandler turn you into a crime-fictionist, or were there other more influential forces pushing you in that direction?

MC: It was solely my exposure to Chandler (and, by extension, Hammett) in Wolff’s class that led me to try my hand at hard-boiled P.I. fiction. The next class I took was from Ron Hansen and it was there that I wrote a story called “There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes,” which was ultimately published in The New Black Mask, a revival of the famous Black Mask pulp magazine where Hammett and Chandler got their start. The character of August Riordan was introduced in that story, and I’ve been writing about him ever since.

JKP: Do you own other items closely associated with Chandler?

MC: I had a full set of Chandler first editions, as well as a full set of Hammett firsts. I also had the Black Mask edition featuring Chandler’s story “The Curtain,” which was partly the basis for his first novel, The Big Sleep. I recently donated all of those items and many more volumes of detective fiction to the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where Randal S. Brandt curates the California Detective Fiction Collection.

JKP: How did you hear about this Doyle’s auction? And were there items other than the typewriter in which you were interested?

MC: I’m not on Twitter or Facebook/Instagram any longer, but I am on Mastodon, and I happened to see a post there about the auction the night before it was scheduled. I rushed to register on the auction site, feeling rather awkward and nervous about participating, since I had never bid at a live auction before and had never contemplated bidding on items as valuable as those in the Chandler collection.

I was interested in the typewriter, but I actually thought it would be out of my price range. I was instead focused on Chandler’s edition of The Maltese Falcon, in which Chandler had rather surprisingly pasted the table of contents from the Black Mask edition containing his story “Killer in the Rain.” It was almost like he was saying to Hammett, “Look, I can sling hard-boiled argot, too!” It seemed like a great association piece for the two writers.

(Right) Chandler’s 1931 hardcover edition of The Maltese Falcon.

The estimated auction price for Chandler’s Falcon was $500-$800, but others must have seen the appeal, too, because it ended up selling for a whopping $4,800. I submitted two bids during the auction—which took place before the typewriter—but was quickly outgunned.

JKP: What was the bidding process of that auction like?

MC: The format for the auction was rather unusual. It was live, but there were three sources for bids: people sitting in a room at the auction house raising paddles, people calling in by phone, and people like me who were using the auction house’s Internet bidding software.

Bids from all three sources were coming in fast and furious during the typewriter auction, and I actually don’t remember the starting price or the number of steps. I do recollect that, after a certain point, it seemed like the contest had come down to two bidders who kept one-upping one another. I had decided that my maximum bid would be $7,500, so, at a certain point where there seemed to be a lull, I nervously “shot my wad” with a bid of that amount, fully expecting that one of the two other bidders would quickly outbid me. To my great surprise, there were no other bids and I won the auction.

I have to confess that I didn’t fully understand the concept of a “buyer’s premium,” so my so-called maximum of $7,500 turned into $9,600 when that was included in the tally. I’m still paying it off on my credit card.

JKP: What do you know about Chandler’s use of this typewriter now in your possession? And where has this typewriter been for the last half century? Has it been publicly displayed, or in someone's private collection, hidden from sight?

MC: The typewriter was willed to Jean Vounder-Davis, who was Chandler’s secretary during the final years of his life. Her daughter, Sybil Davis, received it after her mother passed and she is the one who put it and all the other items in the collection up for auction. She shared this with me in e-mail correspondence after the auction:

Congratulations on now owning the typewriter that Ray Chandler used to write Playback, his last novel, as well as his personal correspondence, short stories, and even some poetry. I’m sure having it will bring you much satisfaction, joy, and perhaps inspiration.

Did you know that Chandler once compared it to an Italian racing car? He was not a “touch typist.” He preferred the “hunt and peck” system using only his two index fingers. …

I … observed him using it on a daily basis. I even have some of his stories, letters and poetry that were typed on the Olivetti.

JKP: Will you actually be using Chandler’s typewriter in your work?

MC: I discovered that, through lack of use, the mechanism is pretty gummed up and some of the rubber parts have failed. Also, the carriage return has broken off (perhaps because Chandler liked to fling the carriage back with hard-boiled authority?). I have taken the machine to an expert repairman and he assures me he can get it back into tiptop shape.

(Left) Mark Coggins—only a temporary “steward” of this Chandler souvenir?

I expect to use it minimally—perhaps to compose a few paragraphs of works in progress. I drafted my first few stories on a typewriter, so it will be fun to go back to the old-school way of writing.

Ultimately, I would like to donate the typewriter to an institution that can preserve it and enable others to see it. I’m already in discussion with the Bancroft Library.

JKP: Have you collected relics from the careers of other crime novelists? Hammett, perhaps—I know you are interested in him, too.

MC: Yes, in addition to my full set of Hammett firsts, I had a signature card from him. I donated this to the Bancroft with the other items.

Whose Town Is It Anyway?

By Mark Coggins
Raymond Chandler, who along with Dashiell Hammett perfected the American hard-boiled detective story, is best known for his well-regarded novels set in Los Angeles, The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1953) among them. Hammett, on the other hand, made his bones with the masterworks he wrote and set in San Francisco, The Maltese Falcon (1930) being the most famous.

Given the close association of Chandler with L.A. and Hammett with San Francisco, would you be surprised to learn that Chandler lived and worked in “the city that knows how” before Hammett? It’s true.

Upon Chandler’s return to the United States, following his service with the Canadian Army in France during World War I, he lived in San Francisco in 1919 and worked briefly at two banks—the Anglo and London Paris National Bank and the Bank of British North America. That predates Hammett’s arrival in town by two years.

(Above) Anglo and London Paris National Bank building in 1981.

While researching Chandler’s time in San Francisco, I learned that the Bank of British North America was located at 260 California Street in 1918, although by 1919 it had apparently merged with the Bank of Montreal.* (The property, the Newhall Building, now contains a Citibank branch.) I more readily found the location of the Anglo and London Paris National Bank, not far away at the intersection of Sutter and Sansome streets. This is currently home to One Sansome Street, a 42-story office tower, and the conservatory of the new building is actually the façade of the old Anglo and London structure (built in 1910). The original cornice and columned archways, in particular, were preserved to bound the glass-roofed courtyard/conservatory.

Given the Anglo and London’s status as “historically significant,” the developers were required to preserve more than just the building’s granite-clad façade prior to breaking ground for the new skyscraper back in the early 1980s. They documented the appearance and design of the former bank as completely as possible, and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the Library of Congress retains that documentation, including original blueprints and photographs taken before demolition.

The accompanying report provides background on the structure’s prolific Mexican-born American designer:

The Anglo and London Paris National Bank was designed by Albert Pissis in 1908 … He was among the chief exponents of what was then called “modern architecture” with its structure derived from the new-invented steel frame, and its imagery inspired by the buildings of ancient Rome and Renaissance …

Many of Pissis’ most noted works survive in San Francisco. The Emporium (835-865 Market Street) and the James Flood Building (870-898 Market Street) were his two largest commissions.

Since the publication of that HABS report, the Emporium (erected originally in 1896, but rebuilt in 1908 after the city’s great earthquake and fire) has been razed to make room for a one-million-square-foot addition to the San Francisco Centre. Yet a portion of Pissis’ work survives once more. The building’s dome was retained to cap the new structure through an impressive feat of hydraulic engineering.

(Right) Flood Building, photo by Mark Coggins.

Just across Market Street, Pissis’ other large commission—the Flood Building—stands today looking much as it did in 1904 when it opened. One of the early tenants of the building was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. And one of the employees of that agency was none other than Dashiell Hammett. In 1915 he had joined “the Pinks” as a clerk, working first in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, and later being assigned to the San Francisco office.

All of which leads us to a hard-boiled epiphany: Hammett and Chandler, the two masters of the American detective story, both worked in San Francisco buildings designed by Albert Pissis!

I’ll leave you with a shot of the interior of the Anglo and London Bank. Can you imagine Raymond Chandler there in 1919 waiting for you behind the teller window as you rush in to deposit your weekly paycheck? Maybe he’d greet you with one of his famous Chandlerisms:

“If you’re looking for trouble, I come from where they make it.”

Interior of the Anglo and London Paris National Bank building.

* This information was updated thanks to help from Randal and Maria Brandt.

Face to Face with Lehane

Author, photographer, and sometime Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins has spent the last few days in Nashville, Tennessee, at this year’s Bouchercon mystery convention. As usual, he packed along his camera. And though he laments, “I didn't do very well at Nashville in terms of pictures,” he did shoot this terrific image of 59-year-old Dennis Lehane (Small Mercies)—who, Coggins says, “I haven’t seen ... at a conference since the early 2000s.”

Standing Out from the Crowd

I wasn’t able to attend this year’s Left Coast Crime gathering, but Bay Area author and photographer Mark Coggins was in attendance. He sent back several of his favorite shots from the four-day event.

(Above) Southern California writer Naomi Hirahara won the 2024 Bill Gottfried Memorial Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel for her most recent book, Evergreen.

Friday evening saw Christa Faust interviewing Guest of Honor Megan Abbott (right) on stage. During their wide-ranging conversation, Abbott revealed that she is working on a TV series adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest (1929) with the crew who gave us this year’s Monsieur Spade.

A Friday morning panels highlight was “There’s No Gum on My Shoe: The Modern P.I.” Left to right: Moderator Lisa Bush’s not-so-confidential informants on the subject were Tim Maleeny, Mark Coggins, James D.F. Hannah, and Pamela Beason.

Bullet Points: Caffeine-Powered Edition

Since I woke up way too early on this cold Friday morning, and am already halfway through my second cup of coffee, I might as well dive into some recent crime-fiction-related news.

• During this year’s Black Orchid Banquet, held on December 4 in New York City, it was announced that Washington, D.C., author Stephen Spotswood has won the 2021 Nero Award for his 2020 novel, Fortune Favors the Dead. The Nero is presented annually by the fan organization The Wolfe Pack to “the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.” (Last year’s recipient was David Baldacci.) That same festive event saw Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson being given the 2021 Black Orchid Novella Award for her story “The Man Who Went Down Under,” published in the July 2022 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. The Black Orchid is sponsored jointly by The Wolfe Pack and AHMM and honors the novella format popularized by Stout. Honorable mentions for the Black Orchid went to “Bad Apples,” by Kathleen Marple Kalb (writing as Nikki Knight); “The Inside Shake,” by Jason Koontz; “House of Tigers,” by William Burton McCormick; “The Mystery of the Missing Woman,” by Regina M. Sestak; and “Lovely As,” by Jacqueline Vick.

• The Bookseller reports that “Dettie Gould has won the Harvill Secker Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Award with her ‘deliciously dark thriller’ The Light and Shade of Ellen Swithin. Her story follows Swithin, who is a skilled actuary in an accounting firm, a dutiful daughter, and a latent serial killer.” It adds that “Gould will have her book published under the Harvill Secker imprint, in a publishing deal with an advance of £5,000. She will also appear on a panel at the Bloody Scotland festival and receive a guest pass for the weekend’s events. The Arvon Foundation, which sponsored the competition, has also offered the winner the chance to attend any one of its creative writing courses.” (Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

• Crime Time FM, an interview podcast hosted by Paul Burke in affiliation with the Web site Crime Time, has named its first Crime Novel of the Year: S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears (Headline). Receiving runner-up honors is Dominic Nolan’s Vine Street (Headline). Also shortlisted for this inaugural commendation were The Village of Eight Graves, by Seichi Yokomizo (Pushkin Press); The Turnout, by Megan Abbott (Faber & Faber); The First Day of Spring, by Nancy Tucker (Hutchinson); and Future Perfect, by Felicia Yap (Wildfire).

• While I have online subscriptions to both The New York Times and The Washington Post, I don’t enjoy similarly unfettered access to Dublin’s Irish Times. So I have not been able to look through that broadsheet’s recent “Best Crime Fiction of 2021” list. However, author-playwright Declan Hughes, who put the piece together along with fellow Irish writer Declan Burke, sent George Easter of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine his 10 choices, via e-mail. They are:

— Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman
— The Survivors, by Jane Harper
— Hidden Lies, by Rachel Ryan
— Blood Ties, by Brian McGilloway
— A Man Named Doll, by Jonathan Ames
— Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery, by Rosalie Knecht
— Palace of the Drowned, by Christine Mangan
— The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz
— A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins
— 56 Days, by Catherine Ryan Howard

• English professor Carole E. Barrowman offers her own roll of favorite mysteries in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal.

• Speaking of “best” books, CrimeReads this morning posted its selections of “The Best True Crime Books of 2021.” I’m pleased to see that its 10 picks include Dean Jobb’s The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer (Algonquin), a work I consumed in a captivated rush this last summer.

• Another CrimeReads piece worth noticing: Keith Roysdon’s tribute to the 1967-1975 TV detective drama Mannix, which starred Mike Connors. As Roysdon writes:

Sure, there have been cool P.I.s (Craig Stevens’ “Peter Gunn” with Henry Mancini’s theme music, full of smooth menace) and affably hot P.I.s (our boy Thomas Magnum) and cerebral consulting detectives (“Sherlock”) and the most charming, hard-luck P.I. on the California coast (“This is Jim Rockford, at the tone leave your name and message …”)

But as far as a play-it-straight-down-the-middle investigator who could take a blow to the head and come back swinging, nobody topped Mike Connors’ “Mannix.” And the show had a hell of a theme too, by Lalo Schifrin.

Roysdon’s full article can be found here. Click here if you’re interested in my own comments on that CBS-TV series.

• Television tidbits: Veronica Mars alumna Kristen Bell has a new psychological thriller coming to Netflix on January 28, The Woman in the Street, a trailer for which can be enjoyed in The Killing Times. And Deadline brings word that “Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters is returning to screens, this time as a TV series for Sweden’s C More and TV2 Norway starring Betrayed’s Axel Bøyum and Mr. Robot’s Martin Wallström. … Headhunters, which was made into a highly-rated Norwegian film 10 years ago … follows a headhunter lying and manipulating his way to success both in his career and in his love life. But one lie leads to another, and soon he is so entangled in his own stories that it becomes a danger to both himself and the people around him.”

• There have been far too many deaths among members of the crime-fiction community lately. The Gumshoe Site mentions one that I somehow missed: “Gordon McAlpine died on November 29. The former college writing teacher wrote his first novel, Joy in Mudville (Dutton, 1989), set in 1930s Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Woman with a Blue Pencil (Seventh Street Books, 2015) was nominated for the 2016 Edgar Award for best paperback. He used his pseudonym Owen Fitzstephen to write Hammett Unwritten (2013) and The Big Man’s Daughter (2020; both from Seven Street Books). The last two novels feature Dashiell Hammett and some people on whom Hammett modeled … the colorful characters in The Maltese Falcon. He was 62.”

• I’m tardy in bringing attention to a pair of posts focused on this year’s Iceland Noir festival (November 16-20), but I don’t want to just let them go unmentioned. Kristopher Zgorski’s report is in BOLO Books; Abby Endler’s recollections are in Crime by the Book.

• Randal S. Brandt, a friend of this blog and a librarian at the University of California Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, was profiled last month in the San Jose Mercury News because of his labors as curator of the Bancroft’s massive California Detective Fiction Collection. The story includes news that Mark Coggins, a Stanford University graduate and infrequent Rap Sheet contributor, added “a complete set of [Raymond] Chandler and [Dashiell] Hammett first editions” to the collection. Explains the News’ Chuck Barney: “Coggins, known for his August Riordan private eye novels, which are also in the Bancroft collection, had been acquiring the books since the early ’90s. He viewed himself as ‘sort of a custodian.’”

• Finally, yesterday’s episode of Terry Gross’ Fresh Air radio program focused on crime of a different sort—and a truly frightening scenario: the end of American democracy, engineered by Donald Trump’s Republican Party. “In a new article titled ‘Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun,’ published in The Atlantic,” she told listeners, “my guest, journalist Barton Gellman, warns January 6 was just practice. We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024. The attempt by Trump and other Republicans to overturn the results of the 2020 election failed. But Gellman reports that Republicans have been building an apparatus for election theft. They’ve studied Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 results. They’ve noted points of failure and have taken steps to avoid failure next time by working to change whose votes are counted, who oversees the election, who chooses the electors and what happens in the courts.” You can listen to the whole interview here. If you’re an Atlantic subscriber, you can read Gellman’s article here.

Bullet Points: Another Overstuffed Edition

• Let’s have a show of hands: Who remembers Sammy Davis Jr. playing private investigator Larry Miller in the 1969 movie The Pigeon? I would’ve counted myself among the uninformed until the other day, when I happened across that 90-minute ABC Movie of the Week on YouTube. (Watch it here, while you can!) Scripted by Edward J. Lakso (The Mod Squad, Mission: Impossible, Charlie’s Angels) and Stanley Roberts (Mannix, Petrocelli, Police Woman), the teleflick “is great,” according to an IMDb review, “because Sammy … doesn’t take himself too seriously and the dialogue uses a number of clichés from the 60’s. Sammy is searching for a girl who doesn’t want to be found. I especially love the scenes between Sammy and Roy Glenn, the veteran actor who plays his dad, a police lieutenant.” Why Wikipedia doesn’t list The Pigeon among Davis’ motion-picture and TV credits, but does include Poor Devil, an awful NBC comedy pilot from 1973, is really anybody’s guess.

• Speaking of forgotten crime-solvers, how about Valerie Bertinelli in the 1990 CBS-TV series Sydney? As Wikipedia recalls, that erstwhile One Day at a Time actress headlined as Sydney Kells, “the daughter of a now-deceased policeman, [who] brings her New York City detective agency (in which she is the only investigator) back to her hometown and her family.” Matthew Perry (later of Friends) held forth as Kells’ rookie-cop brother, while Craig Bierko portrayed an attorney “with whom she shares sexual chemistry.” This spring replacement series lasted only 13 episodes. The best thing about it may have been its opening theme, “Finish What Ya Started,” by Bertinelli’s then-hubby Eddie Van Halen. Clickety-clack right here to watch the main title sequence from Sydney, paired with the introduction to her 1993-1994 sitcom, Café Americain.

• One more YouTube discovery: The Blue Knight, a 1973 NBC mini-series starring William Holden, Lee Remick, Sam Elliott, and Joe Santos, and based on Joseph Wambaugh’s 1972 novel of that same title. It’s been many years since I saw this teleflick with Holden as William “Bumper” Morgan, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department—long enough that I didn’t even remember it was originally broadcast in one-hour segments over four consecutive nights. The production was popular enough to spawn a subsequent series, likewise called The Blue Knight (but on CBS, rather than NBC), starring George Kennedy as Morgan; it ran for two seasons, from 1975 to 1976.

• Oh alright, here’s another: Jigsaw, a 1968 film (“originally made for television,” says Wikipedia, “but shown first in theaters”) starring Bradford Dillman, Harry Guardino, Hope Lange, Michael J. Pollard, and a young Susan Saint James. “After someone places sugar cubes laced with LSD in his cup of coffee,” the YouTube plot synopsis reads, “Jonathan Fields [Dillman] regains consciousness, only to find a woman drowned in his bathtub and flecks of blood on his hands and clothes. Suffering from amnesia, Fields can't think of anyplace else to turn, so he hires Arthur Belding [Guardino], a private detective, to help him find out what happened.” Jigsaw is a remake of 1965’s Mirage.

• Dexter: New Blood, the 10-episode revival of Michael C. Hall’s 2006-2013 drama, Dexter, is now expected to appear on Showtime come November 7. Wikipedia says this show will open “approximately ten years after the original series’ finale.” In the meanwhile, Hall’s Dexter Morgan “has moved to the fictional small town of Iron Lake, New York, hiding his identity under the name of Jimmy Lindsay, a local shopkeeper. He has developed a relationship with Angela Bishop, the town’s chief of police, and has suppressed his serial killing urges. A string of incidents around Iron Lake cause Dexter to fear that the ‘dark passenger’ within him will reveal itself.” The Killing Times offers a 90-second trailer for Dexter: New Blood, which incorporates a version of Del Shannon’s 1961 hit song, “Runaway” (previously employed as the theme for the 1986-1988 NBC police drama Crime Story).

• Almost five years ago, NBC-TV optioned Ben H. Winters’ Edgar Award-winning 2012 science fiction/mystery novel, The Last Policeman, with hopes of creating a series from it. Nothing came of that deal. Now, reports Tor.com, writer-producer Kyle Killen (Awake, Mind Games) is working on a pilot for Fox-TV, based on the same book, the resulting series—to be retitled The Last Police—expected to debut as part of the 2021/2022 season. Deadline explains that this show will follow “a small-town police detective, who, as an asteroid races toward an apocalyptic collision with Earth, believes she’s been chosen to save humanity, while her cynical partner can’t decide what he’ll enjoy more: her delusional failure, or the end of the world itself.” In Winters’ “existential detective novel,” the protagonist was a young male police detective in New Hampshire, one Henry Palace. In 2012, the author suggested that the role go to Jim True-Frost (The Wire, Manifest); no word yet on who might headline Fox’s adaptation.

• This is splendid news, from In Reference to Murder: “The new season of BritBox’s modern cozy mystery series, McDonald & Dodds, premieres on August 3rd. The series follows newly promoted DCI McDonald and veteran sergeant Dodds as they investigate complex mysteries with a web of clues that has everyone guessing who are the real victims and villains. Ahead of the new season, BritBox dropped a trailer, which you can view here.”

• Actress Jessica Walter, who died in March at age 80, has been nominated for a posthumous Emmy Award “for her voice-over work in FX/FXX’s animated comedy series Archer,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Walter voiced the toxic matriarch Malory Archer, the abrasive mother of H. Jon Benjamin’s Sterling Archer. She’s being recognized for her work in the sixth episode of the 11th season, ‘The Double Date.’” Should Walter secure this Emmy, it would be the second of her career; in 1975, she won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series honors for her portrayal of San Francisco’s first female chief of detectives in the NBC Mystery Movie rotator Amy Prentiss.

• In the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, author and New York Times crime-fiction columnist Sarah Weinman gives us a sneak peek of her latest true-crime book, Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free. Due out in February 2022, it tells the bizarre story of Edgar Herbert Smith, who killed a 15-year-old New Jersey honor student in 1957, subsequently contested his case in the media—being given special support by conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr.—and, after winning a retrial and release, kidnapped and tried to kill another woman, this time in California. “By the time Scoundrel is published next year,” Weinman explains, “more than seven years will have passed since I first began researching and reporting the project. I can’t wait to fill you all in on what that entailed, the voluminous trove of documents and letters I consulted across multiple archives, the people I spoke with, and the strange juxtaposition of criminal justice, conservative thought, and book publishing that connected the crimes and misdeeds of one man who fooled so many into looking past his worst instincts to see what was never really there.”

• The Southern California town of Agoura Hills has selected Lee Goldberg’s Lost Hills (2020), his first novel featuring Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective Eve Ronin, as its One City One Book 2021 honoree. “That means,” says Goldberg in his blog, “the local libraries, schools, etc. will be encouraging everyone to read the book and to come to City Hall on Sept. 30th to see me in conversation, buy a copy of my book if they haven’t already … and get their copies signed. Past honorees include Michael Connelly and Dick Van Dyke.” Admission to Goldberg’s Thursday, September 30, appearance will be free, but space is limited and advance registration is required; click here after August 1 to find out more.

• A big change for Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association:

For the first time in its 68-year history, the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association will allow self-published authors to join its ranks. The move comes after the CWA consulted its members, who voted with an 84% majority in favour to accept self-published authors.

Maxim Jakubowski, Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, said: “The founding mission of the CWA was to support, promote and celebrate the crime genre and its authors. In the past, we only accepted traditionally published authors into the CWA, as this was the best indicator of quality. The publishing landscape has changed in recent years, and self-publishing has become a route for professional writers, and indeed there are many trailblazers in this field. The time is right to update our membership criteria.”

The news release adds: “Self-published authors wishing to become a CWA member will need to demonstrate a level of professionalism through a simple-to-complete application form. This will be available on the CWA website from 13 September, when the CWA will first accept applications.”

• It sounds as if this year’s Killer Nashville convention, expected to take place in Franklin, Tennessee, from August 19 to 22, is coming along right on schedule. Keynote speakers at this in-person event will be Walter Mosley, J.T. Ellison, and Lisa Black. More information is available here for anyone who would like to participate, but hasn’t yet registered. The full four-day registration will set you back $419.

• “Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is honoring the memory of its 2020 Grand Master, the late Barbara Neely, with a scholarship to new Black writers …,” writes Mystery Scene magazine’s Oline Cogdill. “MWA will annually present two scholarships of $2,000 each. One scholarship will be for an aspiring Black writer who has yet to publish in the crime or mystery field, and another for Black authors who have already published in crime or mystery.” September 30, 2021, is the deadline for applications (available here); a winner will be declared “in the late fall.” Click here for more information.

• Like millions of other Americans, my wife and I have been watching Season 4 of Unforgotten, part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! summer schedule. There are three additional Sunday-night installments yet to come, but already, Crimespree Magazine’s Erin Mitchell has declared Unforgotten, which stars Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar as London-based cold-case detectives, “the best show on television.” She continues: “Unforgotten is one of those rare shows that does not tell a story at its surface, doesn’t just lead us on a step-by-step procedural journey. The procedure is there, of course, but the subtlety of the remarkable performances addresses the characters’ motivation to allow us to experience the often painful journey though the case. In that way, the experience of watching it is more akin to reading a book, which is the highest praise I can give a TV show.” A 90-second introduction to Season 4 is embedded below.



• Regé-Jean Page, a popular alumnus of the Netflix series Bridgerton, is set to star as The Saint, aka Simon Templar, in a new film based around that Leslie Charteris-created, “Robin Hood-esque criminal and thief for hire.” Deadline says the forthcoming Paramount picture “will be a completely new take that reimagines the character and world around him.” Author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg, nephew of Saint authority Burl Barer (The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Television, and Film), opines on Facebook that Page “will make a great Saint, but I hope they don’t stray too far from what we all loved about Leslie Charteris’ books, the George Sanders movies, and the [1962-1969] Roger Moore TV series.”

• With the abundance of resources provided in The Rap Sheet’s right-hand-column blogroll, you can be excused for not noticing when a new site is added. But let me direct your attention to one in particular: The Ross Macdonald Blog. Composed by Neil Albert, author of the Dave Garrett series (The January Corpse, etc.), it’s turning the critical microscope on every one of Macdonald’s novels, in chronological order, beginning with his non-Lew Archer yarns. Albert—who calls Macdonald (aka Kenneth Millar) “one of the three greatest writers in the genre of the hardboiled private eye, along with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler” (no argument from yours truly)—has been working on this site primarily since the end of last year, and has so far progressed to The Three Roads (1948), Macdonald’s fourth novel. Each book is being considered in detail, over a succession of postings, The Dark Tunnel (1944) and Trouble Follows Me (1946) having each generated 11 entries. (Hat tip to Kevin Burton Smith.)

• Nobody who reads this page regularly should be surprised to hear that I own the 30th-anniversary edition of Mark Dawidziak’s The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, a work originally published in 1989. But now comes word of Bonaventure Press’ Shooting Columbo: The Lives and Deaths of TV’s Rumpled Detective, due out this coming September and written by David Koenig. Although somewhat shorter than Dawidziak’s book (only 248 pages, compared with 410), Shooting Columbo promises behind-the-scenes intelligence about that iconic Peter Falk series, plus “a blow-by-blow account of the making of all 69 classic mysteries, from the first [figurative] pilot, Prescription: Murder, to the last special, Columbo Likes the Nightlife.” The question is, do I need Koenig’s book on my shelves, too?

• Caroline Crampton hosts the podcast Shedunnit, but she’s also the author of a map and guide called Agatha Christie’s England, from London-based Herb Lester Associates, which years ago produced The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles. Already out in England, and due for a September release in the States, Crampton’s publication focuses on “the real and fictional locations in the Queen of Crime’s canon,” as she writes in her e-mail newsletter. “There are dozens of places included, and for each I’ve researched why and how Christie wrote about them. I certainly felt like I gained a greater understanding of her work in the process of putting the guide together, and if you read it I hope you will feel the same.”

• From the “everything old is new again” department: TV Guide critic Matt Roush recently included this exchange in his blog:

Question: Will some forward-thinking Hollywood executive reboot the George Peppard vehicle Banacek? —Steve O.

Matt Roush: Would a reboot of a 1970s private-eye series really be forward-thinking? I loved the randomness of this suggestion, because there were so many higher-profile spokes of NBC’s “Mystery Movie” wheel: McCloud, McMillan and Wife, and, of course, Columbo. Seriously, though, because Banacek is lesser known, reviving a show and a hero that had a sense of humor about itself wouldn’t be the worst idea. In the bigger picture, I’d like to see a network try the “mystery wheel” format again, rotating its series on a weekly or monthly basis. Something like that could air year-round with fewer episodes per series, and that might be refreshing.

While I cringe a bit at Roush labeling Thomas Banacek a “private eye” (he was actually a Boston insurance investigator), I applaud his optimism on the matter of resuscitating television’s once-widespread “wheel series” format (about which I wrote last summer in CrimeReads). And Banacek—with its suave, totally immodest lead and supposedly impossible crimes—might, indeed, make for a fun reboot. But who do you think should fill Peppard’s loafers?

• Bay Area author-photographer Mark Coggins is out with Season 2 of his podcast, Riordan’s Desk. He launched this project in May 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a chapter-by-chapter reading of his seventh August Riordan private-eye novel, 2019’s The Dead Beat Scroll. Earlier this month, he packaged up the final installment of Season 2, a full reading (35 chapters in all) of his 2015 Riordan yarn, No Hard Feelings. And Coggins has already begun reading from Candy from Strangers (2006), his third Riordan mystery. Listen to the complete run of Riordan’s Desk by clicking here.

• Listen up, Bosch fans! “The Everybody Counts Podcast talks Bosch Season 7, Episode 5 and interviews Michael Connelly.”

• Charlie Chan authority Lou Armagno informs us that 92-year-old actor James Hong, who portrayed “Son No.1 to J. Carrol Naish’s Charlie Chan in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan [1957-1958], is to be honored next year with a star on Los Angeles’ Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hong, born in Minneapolis to Hong Kongese parents, and “the last living actor to star as a primary Chan character, either in film or television,” will be the third Chan cast member honored in this fashion; Keye Luke and the aforementioned J. Carrol Naish both won stars before him. Hong’s list of credits extends well beyond The New Adventures of Charlie Chan to include roles in everything from Richard Diamond, Private Eye and Hawaii Five-O to Kung Fu, Harry O, The Rockford Files, Switch, and the 1974 film Chinatown.

• “Edgar Allan Poe: Self-Help Guru”?

• From a patron of The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page: “I’m not making light of the condominium disaster in Florida, but every time a reporter who is covering that story says ‘Surfside,’ this song pops into my head.” Learn more about this other Surfside here.

• The blog maintained by History (formerly The History Channel) recently highlighted what it claims are “the most influential classic shows” from the 1950s, “TV’s “Golden Age.” In the category of crime (click here, then scroll to the bottom of the page), it mentions Martin Kane, Private Eye (1949-1954), Man Against Crime (1949-1954), and Dragnet (1951-1959). But what about Naked City (1958-1959, 1960-1963), Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-1959), M Squad (1957-1960), Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957-1960), Decoy (1957-1959), Have Gun—Will Travel (1957-1963), 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964), Perry Mason (1957-1966), and Peter Gunn (1958-1961)? Today’s younger viewers may be unaware of this, but the ’50s brought us myriad TV detective shows that are still worth watching.

• On the subject of vintage small-screen shows, how about T.H.E. Cat (1966-1967), which starred Robert Loggia as a San Francisco cat burglar named Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat, and spun off a quartet of comic-book adventures?

• Was this really a good idea? You may recall that Deadline reported last year, “James Patterson and Condé Nast are teaming to revive vintage crime fighter The Shadow in a series of books that will also aim to be adapted for the screen.” Hachette Book Group imprint Little, Brown will publish the original series … The Shadow [aka society gadabout Lamont Cranston], a signature New York vigilante, originated in the 1930s as a series of pulp novels by Walter B. Gibson. A popular radio drama based on the books featured the voice of Orson Welles. In 1994, Universal released a feature film adaptation starring Alec Baldwin.” Anyway, Patterson’s introductory entry in this new series, set in the late 21st century and simply titled The Shadow, came out on July 13, and was greeted with more than a modicum of skepticism. San Francisco tour guide and author Don Herron remarks, “I had thought about giving it a shot, and then I saw the cover [shown on the left]. The only thought I could process was Where the fuck is HIS HAT???”

• Yellow Perils is no more enthusiastic about the book.

• Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest (1929), has inspired a number of cinematic creations over the years, including the 1930 picture Roadhouse Nights and the 2005 neo-noir mystery Brick. But the book, which stars Hammett’s nameless San Francisco private eye, the Continental Op, has never been given a faithful adaptation. It did once come close, however, as a series of newspaper clippings in Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West makes clear. In 1941, the Los Angeles Times carried word of Paramount Pictures decision not to remake its 1935 film based on Hammett’s fourth novel, The Glass Key, but to instead develop a script from Red Harvest. Brian Donlevy was slated to portray the Op, with Paulette Goddard and a young Alan Ladd helping to fill out the cast. Unfortunately, that film was first “postponed” and later abandoned. Hoping to boost Ladd’s Hollywood career, Paramount decided to remake The Glass Key after all. Donlevy was nominally the headliner, but Ladd was the real star of that production, while Veronica Lake replaced Goddard as its distaff attraction.

• Did author Hammett really break the window of a downtown department store in Miami, Florida, during a four-day visit he made to that city in 1934? The Palm Beach Post recalled the story late last year, but it may just be an urban legend.

• Talk about dropping the ball! I realized this week that, while I had reported on nominees for the 2021 Scribe Awards, I never announced the winners. In the category of greatest interested to crime-fiction readers—“General Original Novel and Adapted Novel”—Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane’s 12th Mike Hammer novel, Masquerade for Murder (2020), lost out to a video-game-related adventure, Day Zero: Watchdogs Legion, by James Swallow and Josh Reynolds (Aconyte).

• Were I able to attend this year’s PulpFest, taking place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from August 19th through 22nd, I would definitely want to be in the audience for “popular culture scholar” Doug Ellis’ presentation, “The Weird Tales of Margaret Brundage.” “Initially disguising her gender by signing her work as M. Brundage, the artist redefined sensuality for the already scandalous pulp market,” observes the PulpFest Web site. “Her work was later targeted by New York Mayor LaGuardia’s 1938 decency campaign. … Margaret Brundage [1900-1976] created 66 covers for Weird Tales between 1932 and 1945, making her the most in-demand cover artist for the fantasy, horror, and science-fiction magazine. Only Virgil Finlay was a close rival.” Ellis’ remarks on Brundage are scheduled for Friday, August 20.

• The best interview I’ve heard with T.J. Newman, the former flight attendant and author of the new thriller Falling (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), was conducted by Dave Davies on NPR’s Fresh Air program. You can listen to their whole conversation here.

• Powell’s Books, the Portland, Oregon, landmark heralded as “the world’s largest independent bookstore,” is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. As part of the celebration, it has assembled “a curated collection of 50 books from the past 50 years.” I’d be more enthusiastic about this list if—in addition to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future—it contained even one crime, mystery, or thriller novel. No such luck!

• Max Allan Collins mentions in his blog that the 13th Mike Hammer novel he’s “co-authored” with the late Mickey Spillane, is due out from Titan Books in 2022—75 years after the appearance of Spillane’s first Hammer yarn, I, the Jury. This one will be titled Kill Me If You Can.

• There have been so many crime novels backdropped by San Francisco, that Paul French was bound to fail when he determined to collect, for CrimeReads, a representative sample of their diversity. Why, for instance, does he mention Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Poor Butterfly (2012)—the only Toby Peters mystery set in the Bay Area (most of them took place in L.A.)—or Charles Willeford’s one-off, Wild Wives (1956), but completely ignore the oeuvres of Colin Willcox, Stephen Greenleaf, Kelli Stanley, and Bill Pronzini? That said, French’s piece—parked here—is entertaining, and might give you some ideas of things to read as this summer season winds to an end.

• For broader exposure to fictional offenses set in and around San Francisco, consult Randal S. Brandt’s Golden Gate Mysteries wiki.

• And how much fun is this? Blogger Evan Lewis is showcasing the covers, contents pages, copyright information, and occasional lagniappes from every early edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. As he explains in this introductory post, “Some months ago, my old friend and fellow book collector Jim Rogers passed away, and left behind a complete run of EQMM from 1941 to 1959. Those mags have now passed into the care of another old friend, Mr. Larry Paschelke, and Larry agreed to let me scan the covers and share them with you here. (Jim, I have no doubt, would have done the same had I asked, but I didn't know he had them!)” Click here to catch up with Lewis’ project in progress.