"The Diamond Wager" by Samuel Dashiell. NOT HAMMETT? Will Murray Makes the Case!

This story, from the Oct. 19, 1929 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly, has long been thought to be the work of Samuel Dashiell Hammett. Up until ten years ago, though, it had never been reprinted, so few living humans had actually read it. 

I was NOT one the few, and wanted to be. So, ten years ago, I got a muddy copy of the thing on microfilm from the Library of Congress and transcribed it, correcting several typos and making an educated guess at one mysterious word. I then posted it - with some reservation as to its true authorship - here on my blog. Soon after, it appeared in a couple of books and became even more accepted as Hammett's. 

Unfortunately, the all-seeing eye of Mr. Will Murray somehow missed it back then, and the story did not come to his attention until I posted a link on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. He wrote me immediately saying, "Not Hammett." How did he know? Well, Will just seems to know these things, and usually has a fistful of facts to back them up. 

In this case, he promptly pounded out an article for the prestigious internet mag Black Gate, and you're invited to peruse it for yourself. He presents a mighty strong case. What do you think?

You can read the story, as originally posted, here: "The Diamond Wager"

Will's article is here: A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray and the Diamond Wager Caper - Not Dashiell Hammett?

More WILD Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - by Will Murray

Have you read Will Murray’s first collection of WILD Holmes stories? If NO, my review of that one is HERE. If YES, you’ll be pleased to learn this second volume is even WILDER. Holmes and Watson face some of their strangest mysteries, and some even appear to cross over into the supernatural. Do they really? That’s for you to discover.

If you know Mr. Murray only as the worthy successor to Lester Dent (Doc Savage) and Novell Page (The Spider), you’ll enjoy seeing him put on his Conan Doyle pants and deliver the goods on Holmes and Watson. 

Particularly cool are three tales teaming our heroes with Algnernon Blackwood’s psychic investigator John Silence. With an intellect equal to Holmes’ own, Silence is both a partner and a rival, and these stories force Holmes to reexamine the boundaries between the possible and impossible. “The Adventure of the Abominable Adder” features a serpent-shaped ring (which may or may not have originated in ancient Egypt) that seems to bite the wearer. “The Adventure of the Sorrowing Mudlark” finds the ghost of a long-dead lady haunting the Thames riverbed at night. And in “The Adventure of the Emerald Urchin,” an ancient legend of green-skinned children emerging from an underground world appears to have a modern-day recurrence.

The competition and by-play between Holmes and Silence (along with Watson’s sense of stubborn disbelief) adds an additional layer of interest to these tales. I have not read any of Blackwood’s John Silence stories, but these made me want to check them out.

On their own, Holmes and Watson struggle with a pair of deaths attributed to spontaneous combustion; a stage performer exhibiting impossible strength; a man who dies in bed with his blood missing; a cabman’s shelter that appears and vanishes, taking cabmen with it; and a man seemingly blown out of his own chimney.

There’s also the cover story, in a which a tree seems to grown an eyeball, and  a wind-up adventure in which all London is agog about coins that seem to prove the legend of Atlantis.

WILD adventures? No doubt about it. And from hints in the back of the book, Volume 3 is going to be even WILDER.

"Woodman's Test" by MICKEY SPILLANE (1942)

Mickey Spillane drops in again, this time from the third issue of 4Most Comics, dated Summer 1942. Thanks to OtherEric for the ComicBookPlus scans.

Forgotten Stories: "GAY FALCON" by Michael Arlen (1940, 1945)

We take time out from our regularly scheduled review of EQMM covers and contents to present this story of interest from the March 1945 issue of that mag. "Gay Falcon," according to their acknowledgments page, originally appeared in Town & Country magazine in 1940. 

It's interesting to note that whoever wrote the following Intro for EQMM had an odd notion of what makes a character hardboiled." Maybe my reading of the story was overly colored by George Sanders' movie version, but the guy depicted here seemed very close to the "charming and romantic rogue" of the films.

I haven't seen the movie version, but it appears they based it loosely on the plot of this story. The characters' names were changed, including that of our hero, who becomes "Gay Laurence," and his last name from the story becomes a nickname, ala The Saint. Of course, the film character was based more on Simon Templar than "Gay Falcon" anyway. 

HAMMETT HERALD-TRIBUNE: Killing Characters (1939)

Greenville News, May 7, 1939

HAMMETT HERALD-TRIBUNE: "The Second Story Angel" and "The Judge Laughed Last" (1937-39)

"The Second-Story Angel" made her first appearance in the Nov. 15, 1923 issue of Black Mask. It was a non-Op story, but introduced Angel Grace Cardigan, the stalwart daughter of crookdom who later met the Op in "The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money." These days, you'll find an edited version in the 1962  digest A Man Named Thin, and the 1999 collection Nightmare Town.

In 1937, the year after leaving Black Mask, Joe Shaw began editing a series of Mystery Classics for newspapers, and this was one of his selections. Among others in the series were "Parlor Trick" by Peter Ruric (Paul Cain), "South Wind" by Theodore A. Tinsley, and "The Caleso Murders," "The Man from Shanghai," "Murder - West of Guam" and "Diamonds of Death" by Raoul Whitfield. I'll be showing you the artwork from those bye and bye.

The clip below is from the Vancouver Province, Aug. 7, 1937. I also saw it in the Shreveport Times, July 25, 1937. It includes an intro, likely penned by Shaw himself. I blew it up so you can decipher it with a minimum of squinting.

"The Judge Laughed Last" first appeared under the title "The New Racket" in the Feb. 15, 1924 Black Mask. The title was apparently changed for its newspaper debut, and it carried that title into some (but not all) of the various Adventures of Sam Spade collections in the 1940s. Sadly, it does not feature Spade. Along with "The Second Story Angel," I believe it is one of the very few stories that have yet to be reprinted in unedited form. A tragedy.

The clip here is from the El Paso Times of March 28, 1937. I also found it in the Detroit Free Press for Dec. 10, 1939. The artwork, by "Briggs," is probably by Austin Briggs, whom you saw in the Secret Agent X-9 story I ran a while back.

Forgotten Books: THE COMPLETE CASES OF MacBRIDE & KENNEDY by Frederick Nebel

In my estimation, the ten year saga of MacBride & Kennedy was the second most important series ever to appear in the pages of Black Mask. The only thing to top it, you can probably guess, was Hammett's Continental Op.

The reprinting of this series was long time coming. Nebel's agent tried to sell Avon a collection of stories back in 1950, after the publication of the "Tough Dick" Donahue book Six Deadly Dames. But Avon declined. I pitched a volume, to be titled Raw Law, to Dennis McMillan back in the '80s, when he was reprinting stuff by Fredric Brown and Howard Browne, but that failed too.

Thankfully, Keith Allen Deutsch and Matt Moring finally got 'er done in 2013, with this four volume collection of the whole shebang. I was enlisted to write an Intro, allowing me to present all the Nebel info I'd gathered, and thoroughly enjoyed the task. All are still available, totaling thirty-seven slam-bang novelettes. Check 'em out!

HAMMETT HERALD-TRIBUNE: The Girl With the Silver Eyes - Vancouver (1936)

"The Girl With the Silver Eyes" made its first appearance in the June 1924 issue of Black Mask. The artwork for this serialized version is credited to Bud Briggs. You'll find Hammett's original version reprinted in the 2001 Library of America volume Crime Stories and Other Writings, the 2016 Mysterious Press ebook The Continental Op: The Complete Case Files, and 2017's The Big Book of The Continental Op. All all printings, as far as I know, were edited. Beware!