Today in bizarre literary confluences:
The editor of The Strand discovers 15 unpublished stories by the mystery writer Dashiell Hammett at the Harry Ranson Center in Texas. Apparently they’re really good.
Meanwhile, Raymond Chandler’s wife’s ashes are sprinkled on his grave, 60 years after his death. While researching the author a historian discovered Chandler had always wanted to be buried alongside his wife, and hired a lawyer – who happens to also be John Wayne’s daughter – to persuade a judge to authorize a reburial.
See? Scholars do help people! Especially dead people.
Hammett and Chandler were contemporaries, of course – along with Ross Macdonald, they invented the character of the hardboiled detective.
Dashiell Hammett was a dapper fellow
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