Tour: By the Book

Posted on June 8, 2026 by Don

Got a note from Joe Salerno, checking to make sure I’m not actually leading the Dashiell Hammett Tour any more.

Sorry, no.

My big excuse — and it’s the truth — I aged out. I realized at any point something could derail it all. A knee might go out for no apparent reason. The spine might come ripping out of my back. Jeez, I could fall apart right there on the mean streets. . . .

The day Joe inquired I did have pneumonia. Not the worst case of pneumonia I’ve ever had (that was last year), but irritating enough to back up my call on not scheduling any walks.

Joe rolled with the punches and told me that on June 6: “I used your book and did it myself today.”

He sent in the shot above of 1201 California — in real life the Cathedral Apartments, thought to serve as the model for The Coronet, where Brigid O’Shaughnessy stays, in The Maltese Falcon.

More recently 1201 California was used for the exterior shots of the “retirement home” where Ted Danson goes undercover in A Man on the Inside, especially the first season.

The Dashiell Hammett Tour book was crafted for use by anyone who might drop into the burg on days I wasn’t leading walks, and now it can come into its own. Any edition will serve, but the edition in the Ace Performer series or the previous release from City Lights Books have the most info packed in.

In fact — and I said this often, even years ago — the tour book contains pretty much everything I ever did on the walk. All the places, but also all the cool theories which grabbed the spotlight on the tour for a few years, and then were nudged aside by others.

After the first decade or so, even the four hour version of the walk couldn’t cover everything I’d been doing. But I recorded them all in the tour book.

All the editions are out of print, but you can track them down manhunter-style, to get in the mood for the walk.

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Rediscovered: Ex Libris Virgil Finlay

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Don

Autograph Hound Saturday. You know the drill. Another week has passed, and Autograph Hound Brian Leno has added more signatures to his collection.

A thousand John Hancocks in the naked city. . . . This is the story of one. . . .

Here’s Brian:

Something I picked up.

This one will sit next to my Finlay/Quinn signed copy of Roads.

Love the signature plus the bookplate.

It’s only a Grosset & Dunlap — but if it’s good enough for Finlay, it’s good enough for me.

Filmed as Our Girl Friday, I believe. Obviously Norman Lindsay was quite the artist himself. In fact, I’m not positive but that a Lindsay autograph won’t set you back more than a Finlay.

Posted in Film, Lit | Tagged , , , , , |

Hammett: Birthday 132

Posted on May 27, 2026 by Don

Today, Hammett’s 132nd birthday. And the guy keeps hanging in.

On May 1st he cracked Jeopardy! again.

S4E170. In the Double Jeopardy round.

Category: Life on TCM. $800 clew:

In “The Thin Man” Myrna Loy catches up to her husband by ordering 6 of these cocktails — lined up in front of her.

Contestant: “What’s a martini?”

Ken Jennings: “Yes.”

And Myrna Loy was nothing short of great in that Hammett role. What was it Nat Pendleton as police Lt. John Guild said later? “You’ve got hair on your chest, sister!”

Posted in Dash, Film | Tagged , , , , |

Posse McMillan: October 2025

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Don

Lou Boxer of NoirCon popped in this image taken at the last NoirCon, October 2025. A more recent look at the late Dennis McMillan.

Pic shows Gary Phillips and DMac — you’ll remember Gary as a contributor to the shadow life of Dennis that began to follow his regular life around.

Posted in DMac | Tagged , , |

Mort: Dennis Ray McMillan

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Don

People asked, so I dug a little deeper into the recent death of publisher Dennis McMillan. I first heard he died on May 1, but update that to May 5 — as announced in this message on the Dennis Facebook page:

“Dennis McMillan died on May 5, 2026 at HonorHealth John C. Lincoln Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. He had caught pneumonia and had some cardiac issues which led to his passing on the fifth day in the hospital.”

The shot above is one Dennis sent me when he turned 60 — a self portrait, and I testify that is Dennis both in the flesh and in spirit.

I called Kent Harrington to see if he’d heard more details. Last I knew Dennis had been in Tucson for a few months, acting as caretaker for an old guy in decline with COPD. (If I have it right, this guy was a longtime pal of Kent Anderson.) Before that Dennis was in Florida, doing pretty much the same thing — I think I heard that that person died, leading to the move back to Tucson.

Calling Dennis several times recently to fact-check a memoir I was working on, he told me that he was going to leave Tucson. He couldn’t take it — the guy he was helping wouldn’t quit smoking, and he didn’t want to watch him kill himself any longer. Kent tells me that Dennis actually came back into the house one day to find a corpse. Profoundly depressing.

Dennis set up his next move, leaving Tucson early in April. He arranged to handle book sales for Marc Walter in Phoenix — Walter had a separate house for his collection where Dennis could stay while he did the work. He rolled in with a U-Haul and Walter noticed he was somewhat weak and needed help unloading. Dennis had a cough when he arrived.

Walter also noticed that Dennis wasn’t getting sales info posted. Apparently Dennis complained about the mattress in the house, thinking it might be a cause of his increasing coughing and weakness. Not tracking. He suspected he had “valley fever” — a Southwest condition, bacterial, that afflicts older people.

They changed out the mattress. Dennis didn’t get better. Not working on the collection. Couldn’t focus. If you’ve ever had pneumonia — I have a case of it right now — the signs are all right there. You just don’t realize how sick you really are.

On May 1 they got Dennis to the hospital where they took fluid off his lungs. On May 3 they wanted to intubate, but Dennis refused. He died on May 5.

He left his body to science.

People are talking about doing collections of memoirs, and I imagine some will appear. And other memoirs and appreciations later.

The shakeout now really begins on the lasting reputation of his press — or not. I trust no one doubts where I stand on that legacy.

Posted in DMac, News | Tagged , , |

Hollywood Beat: That Photogenic Mug, Jim Tully

Posted on May 16, 2026 by Don

Autograph Hound Saturday yet again. . . .

Back in 2012 I made a run down to Hollywood to hit Musso & Frank and hobnob with my fellow wizards.

Leo Grin had mentioned that he noticed a nice signed photo of hobo writer Jim Tully in a bookstore across Hollywood Boulevard from the iconic eatery. Still there. I popped for it — first, to spotlight on Up and Down These Mean Streets as part of our continuing Tully coverage, and second, to then send along to our great and maniacal Autograph Hound pal Brian Leno. Poor guy didn’t have a signed shot of Tully. And you know he needed one.

“Here’s something I just picked up a couple days ago,” Brian tells me. “Now I have two signed Tully photos.

“This one — only about 7×9 — is not near the size of the masterpiece you gifted me. The big one is about 11×14. They are both beautiful.

“Signed from the Beggars of Life year.”

Turns out Brian needed two (yeah, yeah, we know he needs more than two). Check out the new one, above.

Posted in Film, Lit | Tagged , , , , |

Mort: DMac & DSF

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Don

Man. A Couple of Really Bad Days at Black Rock.

A few days after the fact I heard from fellow Posse McMillan member Kent Harrington that our pal, publisher Dennis McMillan, had passed away on Friday May 1st. Word as of now, from pneumonia. I believe Dennis was around 76 years old.

I mentioned earlier that I was working on a new memoir of Dennis for the Crime and Company section of the follow-up collection to Death Lit. Got it done a couple of weeks ago. One of the best parts was calling up Dennis to check on the accuracy of the reportage, chatting for an hour or two each time. And it turns out his quotes now will be the last word on the subject. I was expecting him to be around to read it, for his amusement, since he’d totally forgotten about getting the speeding ticket in West Texas as we pointed his Pontiac Aztek toward Austin for the 2002 Bouchercon and the launch of Measures of Poison. That whole trip, one of my fave Dennis memories.

I met Dennis in San Francisco in 1982, when he was on the cusp of jumping into publishing. A couple of earlier memoirs, written for convention program books, appear in Death Lit — and I guess I need to do at least one more, about the time Dennis poisoned me.

And maybe I ought to do something about the Most Absurd Moment I Ever Experienced, when Dennis — who drove giant cars, Packards, Caddies, Lincolns, Hummers, Sherman Tanks — his entire adult life suddenly became a proponent of the views of that moron Greta Thunberg. I’ve never been more flabbergasted.

Poisoning aside, it was always fun to hang out with Dennis. I was lucky to know him.

Word drifted in that on May 2 Donald Sidney-Fryer — The Last of the Courtly Poets, Arkham House author, etc. & etc. — died at the age of 91. The death of DMac was unexpected, but DSF had been in hospice care for terminal cancer for a few months, so it was just a matter of time. One of my great pals — I met him late in 1973.

Yes, I’ll be doing bits on DSF for that next book — I would have done them if he had made it to 100. So far, I have only jotted down key words or ideas on scraps of paper, but soon enough it’ll be time to fill the moments out, get them in some sort of order. DSF gets his own section in the book, but appears throughout, notably in other sections on Fritz Leiber and Clark Ashton Smith.

Posted in DMac, Frisco, Lit, News | Tagged , , , , |

Rediscovered: Belly Band Tuesday

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Don

We’ve done belly bands before — notably, one on Michael Connelly’s first crime novel. But now I sense that our maniacal book collecting pal Brian Leno might have picked up a jones for those bands.

Just in case, I better set aside a day for it.

Last one he showed us was for an August Derleth title. With this Al Blackwood, that’s two. I bet he has more. And I’d really bet he wants more.

Here’s Brian:

Not a tough or expensive book but I’ve never seen one with a belly band so I had to have it. As I keep repeating, it’s the rarity that fuels my collecting fingers.

Nothing that will cause an earthquake in book collecting circles, but still pretty cool.

I’ve seen a first edition copy of Orwell’s 1984 with a belly band. But I’ll not be selling the house anytime soon.

Posted in Lit | Tagged , , , |

Rediscovered: Gene and Joe

Posted on April 18, 2026 by Don

Autograph Hound Saturday. Courtesy Brian Leno, today let’s spotlight a favorite writer here on These Mean Streets.

“Some good news,” Brian reports, “I picked up a signed Eugene Cunningham’s Texas Sheriff for 20 bucks. No dj but it supposedly has a long inscription with a drawing. Bought it sight unseen but couldn’t pass it by for 20 smackers.”

The inscription mentions Chihuahua Joe, one of Cunningham’s best characters, who sometimes drops into the action mid-novel and always adds some firepower to the fun. It also features the “brand mark” EC on the flank of the galloping steer. The brand is featured on the front boards of the early Cunningham Westerns.

Brian got a great deal on this 1934 novel — of course, now he’ll have to pony up more loot to get a copy with a nice dustjacket he can marry to his copy. Still, cheaper than the usual $300 or so for an inscribed Cunningham first in dustjacket. In my experience, I can’t remember Gene just flat-signing a book. He always lays out the wordage and the flourishes.

A couple of years ago Brian thought I landed a great deal on Cunningham’s Texas Triggers, the 1938 Houghton Mifflin first edition in dustjacket, for about $130. Inscribed full page on the ffe and signed “Gene” — also with his full autograph and brand mark on first half-title. On front pastedown Gene made the note “San Francisco — Along in February, ’38”.

Aside from the fact that I like his word-slinging, Cunningham hits several sweet spots for me.

First: San Francisco. He obviously passed through a few times, and finally bought a home overlooking Cliff House and lived his last years here — I detail it in The Literary World of San Francisco.

Second: Dashiell Hammett — and thus connected to San Francisco. Gene was one of the earliest critics to hail Hammett’s work, in the El Paso Times, I think it was — and before The Maltese Falcon. He also sold stories to the pulp Black Mask, and was one of the first to show the explosive influence of Hammett’s 1929 Red Harvest in his Western Riders of the Night in 1932. For the next several novels, if you enjoy high body-counts. . . .

Third: Robert E. Howard. In his personal library the prolific Texan Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan and Bran Mak Morn, had a copy of Gene’s non-fiction history of Wild West gunfighters — Triggernometry.

Posted in Dash, Frisco, Lit, REH | Tagged , , , |

Rediscovered: Shiel and Floyd and an Absurd Adventure of Dennis McMillan

Posted on April 16, 2026 by Don

Just noticed a quick email from 2022 where Brian Leno told me:

Came across a letter where Lawrence of Arabia — in his T. E. Shaw alias — tells a bookseller he will take a copy of Shiel’s The Purple Cloud.

Pretty cool.

But over 3,000 bucks cool.

I replied, “Man, if only John D. Squires and Steve Eng were alive to fwd this delightful tidbit to!”

My M.P. Shiel pals JDS and Eng were back in mind recently as I was prepping a section of essays about the author of The Purple Cloud for my next LitCrit MegaPack. The sequel to Death Lit.

The section Crime and Company this time spotlights Shiel and Floyd Salas — last time Hammett and San Francisco and Charles Willeford ate up most of the space. Plus other pieces. I’ve been poking along on a rumination about The Shadow, getting it where I want it.

And I realized that I had never written up one of my top fave humorous anecdotes about Dennis McMillan — an incident Dennis himself doesn’t even remember any more. I eased a mini-memoir about Eddie Little in as an aside in that one.

Buried in that material, I realize I haven’t done much posting lately — now you know why. The general intent is to have the book ready for Halloween — or Xmas — release. May be able to do it. All-new memoirs of Fritz Leiber, Ed Price and others. A touch-up on my long article about H. Warner Munn. And if you wondered why Clark Ashton Smith and Donald Wandrei didn’t seem to get mentioned much in Death Lit, hey, here you go.

Posted in DMac, Lit, News | Tagged , , , , , , , |