San Franisco exhibit honors Hammett

[ghost of miles]

Wish I lived in the Bay Area... I'd sure give it a whirl:

Hammett exhibit in SF

[BFrank]

If you really want to get into the Hammett thing, I HIGHLY recommend this:

The Dashiell Hammett Tour

I've done it a couple of times, and Don Herron has his schtick down. It is a very enjoyable walk around SF.

[AllenLowe]

love Hammett - I 've always thought, pound for pound (or maybe in technical terms) that Raymond Chandler was the better writer, but that Hammett was much deeper. Try Red Harvest, the best Hammett novel, IMHO - also, Joe Gores' book Hammet is a must read, a re-creation of Hammett's early years -

[ghost of miles]

Might be a case of re-reading him so many times, but lately I've come to prefer THE GLASS KEY and THE DAIN CURSE--the former for how it works a big-city political machine into the plot, the latter for its depiction of drug-and-cult-crazed 1920s California. THE MALTESE FALCON is obviously a masterpiece, and I re-read it every couple of years.

Allen, have you ever read the original THIN MAN? It came out in a magazine in the mid-1970s and has showed up in at least two anthologies in the past few years, including the Library of America volume of Hammett's short stories. Fascinating--much as I like the published THIN MAN, I wish he'd been able to finish the earlier draft, which has no Nick and Nora, but rather a solitary detective named John Guild, who may be a mulatto (DH recycled the name for a minor character in the published THIN MAN).