ejm duggan (ejmd@cwcom.net)
Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:56:48 +0000
On Sun, 29 Aug 1999, Michael Chong <mchong@ytv.com>
wrote:
> I was just checking out Amazon's info on _Nightmare
Town_ and came across
> the listing for _Woman in the Dark_. There isn't
much details. What is it?
'Woman in the dark' is a long short story. It first appeared
as a three-part serial in Liberty magazine in 1933. It next
appeared in a Mercury Mystery digest in 1952, also entitled
_Woman in the Dark_, together with three Op stories and three
non-Op stories. Most of the Mercury Mystery / Jonathan Press
digests were re-issued as Dell map-backs. The Woman in the
Dark digest *wasn't* re-issued.
The story's next appearance was as a hardback in 1988,
published in both the US and the UK, with the subtitle 'a
novel of dangerous romance', with an introduction by Robert
B. Parker. This is likely to have been the item you saw
listed on Amazon.
> Also, once I came across a copy of an old copy of
something called
> _Blood Money_ attributed to Hammett. I couldn't skim
through it
> because it was wrapped in plastic.
_Blood Money_ contains two linked stories, which combine to
make a two-part 'novella'. The stories are: 'The Big
Knockover' and '$106,000 Blood Money'. The stories first
appeared in Black Mask in the 1920s. They were first issued
together as a Bestseller Mystery under the title
_$106,000 Blood Money_ in 1943. I'm not sure if the first
printing
(1943) or second printing (1944) of the second edition (ie
the Tower edition) was the first to take the short title
_Blood Money_. Layman isn't clear on this in his Hammett
bibliography, and I haven't yet unpacked the article by
William F. Nolan which unravels the printing history of this
title.
The short title was also used for the Dell edition (3rd ed)
which was printed twice, as Dell #53 in 1944 (machine gun
cover) and Dell #486 in 1951 (gga cover).
It was published again (4th ed) as a Jonathan Press Mystery
in 1948, under the title _The Big Knock-Over_.
The two linked stories appear again, with others, including
the fragment
'Tulip', in the collection put out under the title _The Big
Knockover_ in 1966 with an introduction by Lillian
Hellman.
ED
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