George,
Re your comments below:
> My take on Red Harvest and The Dain Curse is that
they reflect
> Joseph T. Shaw's overbearing editorial style. The
typical Shaw
> edited Black Mask story is very linear with no plot
climax just a
> series of violent events that bludgeon the reader
with hardboiled
> images.
>
> I liked both of these books when I read them, many,
many years ago.
> I remember thinking when I read Red Harvest that
this book is
> Hammet's answer to Carroll John Daly or, in other
words the
> Continential Op knee deep in a Race Williams
plot.
In fact, it was not Daly that Shaw wanted his writers to
model. He hated Daly's work and only published him because he
was so popular. The writer he really respected, and wanted
his stable to emulate was Hammett. Sometimes it worked, as in
Frederic Nebel's Donahue stories. Sometimes it didn't (at
least not as well), as in Chandler's two Mallory
stories.
Hammett wasn't trying to emulate Daly in either RED HARVEST
or THE DAIN CURSE. He'd already been experimenting with "town
tamer" plots
(i.e. "Nightmare Town" and the Op story "Corkscrew"). And
he'd certainly written more than his share of stories about
screwed-up families a la CURSE's Dains/Leggets ("The Gatewood
Caper" and "The Scorched Face" both come to mind).
The fact is that Hammett, quite on his own, was just as
likely to use slam-bang action scenes as Daly, right from the
start. In fact he was far better at them than Daly. But,
action scenes notwithstanding, you can't read even the
earliest, rawest Op stories and really see any influence on
Hammett by Daly. Hammett was following his own muse right
from the start. Daly just had the good luck to get started
around the same time as Hammett, and the better luck to get
"Three-Gun Terry" and "Knights of the Open Palm" published
before "Arson Plus" and "Slippery Fingers." If he hadn't been
first, it's doubtful he'd be remembered today.
In fact, it was Daly who, post HARVEST, emulated Hammett by
sending Race Williams to a small town in upstate New York to
clean out the gangster elements. The "connected stories" in
which he did this were reprinted some years ago in THE
ADVENTURES OF RACE WILLIAMS. I believe it may have been
Daly's intention to publish that "serial" as a novel. In
fact, since the phrase "better corpses" appears several times
in those connected "town tamer" stories, I suspect it may
even have BEEN published as a novel, in England under the
title BETTER CORPSES, but I'm not absolutely sure of
this.
> Does anyone have a favorite pulp other than Black
Mask? Dime
> Detective, maybe? Detective Fiction Weekly? My
personal favorite is
> Speed Detective.
DIME DETECTIVE was an excellent pulp, but I have a fondness
for DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, partly because it published so
many cop stories (the founder, Bill Flynn, was an ex-cop who
wrote stories and novels based on his own law enforcement
experiences; for obvious reasons, that resonates with me),
and because, being weekly rather than monthly, it published
so many serials that were just serials, rather than
ostensibly autonomous but connected "short stories." For
example, Cornell Woolrich's first novel, THE BRIDE WORE
BLACK, was first published in DFW.
JIM DOHERTY
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