RARA-AVIS: The Uncollected Hammett


e j m duggan (ejmd@cwcom.net)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 17:59:58 +0000


On 25 Jun 99,, james.doherty@gsa.gov wrote:
 
> Either "Arson Plus" or "Slippery Fingers" is published in Nolan's *The
> Black Mask Boys*, I believe.

'Bodies Piled Up' [aka 'House Dick'] is the Hammett story in Nolan's
_BMB_; it also appears (as 'House Dick') in the DH Omnibus.

> One or the other also appears in the Bill Pronzini-edited
> *Arbor House Treasury of Detective & Mystery Stories
> from the Great Pulps* (Arbor, 1983).

I'm not surprised---there're so many of these fat volumes now
(Greenberg; Pronzini; Jakubowski) it's difficult to keep track. (Some times a rarity gets re-issued, but usually it's something which is available in another colelction.) Maybe someone on the list has a copy
[I bet it'll be Mario] and can tell us which Hammett story is in it.

> Your list leaves out "Who Killed Bob Teal?" which, in addition to
> being one of the first times, probably *the* first time, an entry
> in an ongoing mystery series featured the death of a
> regular supporting character in the series, in addition to being the only
> Op story that was published as, ostensibly, a true crime article rather
> than a mystery short story, also was the Hammett's first use of the
> "avenging the murdered partner" theme, essentially using a puzzle
> situation, and a clue which would be replicated years later in *The
> Maltese Falcon*.

Yes---although Spade doesn't have the mud on O'Shaugnessy's shoes as the clincher, in the way the Op does in the Teal case.

> I believe "Who Killed Bob Teal?" was included in an
> obscure anthology of fact crime articles by well-known mystery fiction
> writers, but the title escapes me.

It's included in _Murder Plus_ edited by Marc Gerald. I left this story off the list because it's been re-published in two collections, _Murder Plus_ and the DH Omnibus. I suppose the DH Omnibus is out of print and 'doesn't count', but then again I think the Marcus collection is o.o.p. too. The Gerald volume should be locatable though
(worth getting it you come across it---in addition to Hammett, there's a Jim Thomson story, a Robert Bloch (yup: Ed Gein again) and---egg suit on---SS van Dine *and* Erle Stanley G.

ED

-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         
|
|                The Big House of Knowledge                |
|               <http://www.ejmd.mcmail.com>             |

--
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/.






This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Fri 25 Jun 1999 - 13:11:37 EDT