Gosh, George --
You know this would be my Holy Grail, the picture of The Big
Three. But I haven't seen the pix. And just maybe, I don't
expect to.
I certainly appreciate the photo of Gil Brewer and Al James
(who among other things, was Day Keene's son) that you can
see on the Gil Brewer website created by the Brewer estate.
I'd suggest a look at the website, particularly because it
now offers more than the last time I looked. They've been
doing a great job getting Brewer's work back into print, both
here and internationally.
I don't want to slight all the great writers working today,
but for me, it's the old stuff. There's so much opportunity
now for archival and historical reprintings of classic (well,
Twentieth-Century) American crime fiction that it's truly an
exciting moment in the genre.
But back to the picture of the Big Three, and those others
who surrounded them. .. I'll keep looking but I don't expect
to find it. In the fifties a camera was a luxury item. There
were no instamatics, no digital storage, it was film, and who
among this crew was going to have the money to spring for
film? Or the processing?
I saw the authors Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller recently
and had the chance to ask them what they're own Holy Grails
of crime fiction might be. They both said a First, with a
dust jacket, of The Maltese Falcon.
Just as it was when Hammett picked up a copy from
a pile of books and riffled through the pages, some years
past. When you could still smell the ink on the pages.
Hammett and Hammett ... now there's a prescription for
domestic bliss.
I've already copped to the Whittington-Brewer-Keene photo. ..
What's your Holy Grail?
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