03 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Wanted: Linda Conquest
Last seen: In Raymond Chandler’s The High Window (1942).
The artists on this great site create composite images based on the literary descriptions of fictional characters using a commercially available law enforcement composite sketch software.
13 Thursday Mar 2014
Posted in Hard-boiled detective, Hard-Case Crime, noir, Noir News
12 Wednesday Mar 2014
Posted in Hard-boiled detective, Hard-Case Crime, noir, Noir News
Tags
amberger, fratricide no good deed, hard case crime, hard-boiled detective, noir, palsgraf v long island rail rowed, raymond chandler, SMT Maxx, spillane
Vic Del Frate isn’t your average hood. He is violent, crude, greedy—but he also has a head for numbers. He’s a figurer, a schemer, a manipulator who’s as deadly with his .45 as he is playing the stock market of pre-Crash Wall Street.
Worst of all, he’s head over two-tone-wingtip heels in love with the woman of a rich con-man. Vic infiltrates a major stock market scam, derails the grand opening of a new railroad, and accidentally blows up a train station before his ugly past catches up with him…. Continue reading
19 Sunday Jan 2014
Posted in Noir News
When he wasn’t writing best-sellers, Mickey Spillane was driving race cars, diving for treasure, working undercover with cops, chasing moonshiners and being shot out of a cannon for the Clyde Beatty Circus… Continue reading
19 Sunday Jan 2014
Posted in American Fighting Arts, Hard-Case Crime, noir
I admit, this might not have been my smartest move. Before the hour of noon, I’d made an enemy of a rich and influential con. For a girl I’d seen for less than two minutes the night before, and had absolutely no reason to believe that she even remembered me. Sometimes even a figurer like me acts like a fool. Continue reading
11 Saturday Jan 2014
Posted in Noir News
A North Carolina sheriff has pulled off a deal that should make everyone but the bad guys happy.
When two vintage Thompson fully automatic submachine guns — better known as “Tommy Guns”– were discovered collecting dust in the Forsyth County armory, Sheriff William Schatzman immediately realized their value. Continue reading
10 Friday Jan 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
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Quarry is one of Max Allen Collins’ great noir series. Chronicling the feats of an assassin who turns the tables on his craft, the Quarry series ranks among our favorites, right alongside Robert Bloch’s Hit Man novels.
This volume is the latest installment…
19 Thursday Dec 2013
Posted in Hard-boiled detective, Hard-Case Crime, noir, Preview
Vic Del Frate isn’t your average hood. He is violent, crude, greedy—but he sure has a head for numbers! He’s a figurer, a schemer, a manipulator who’s as deadly with his hands as he is playing the stock market of pre-Crash Wall Street… Continue reading 15 Sunday Sep 2013
Posted in Uncategorized
World War II put a temporary dent into the popularity of Asian martial arts in America that “jiu jitsu” had briefly enjoyed in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It wasn’t until the aptly titled “chop sockey” movies out of Hong Kong that Western audiences reconnected with the highly stylized if not artistically choreographed exotics. Until then, the shortest way from Point A to Point B was a straight right to the chops… Continue reading
07 Thursday Jun 2012
Posted in noir
Tags
American Fighting Arts, hard case crime, hard-boiled detective, Nightmare Town, stick fighting Dashiell Hammett
It’s all well and good reading the foreign imports of fencing and fighting manuals published in the United States in the 19th century. Especially the one or two stick and staff fighting books.
But the Yanks knew their way around a stick all by their lonesome.
Dashiell Hammett includes a great fight scene in his 1924 short story “Nightmare Town”… Continue reading
Hard Crime Pulps 