Decades after it was written on the eve of World War II, a lost Poirot story by Agatha Christie has been found. Today it is published in the Daily Mail for the first time: The Capture Of Cerberus (scroll half way down the page). [more inside]
posted by lioness on Aug 21, 2009 - 19 comments

The owner of a camera stolen in Krakow and bought on E-Bay is reunitied with their pictures An amazing story about an international effort to track down the owner of a camera stolen in Krakow, Poland. The camera was bought on E-Bay and found to have 1100 pictures on it. Through some fantastic work by members of the Australian Photography Forum, the owner of the camera was found by analysing the pictures.
posted by Man_in_staysis on Mar 16, 2009 - 5 comments

"To make off with hubby's fortune, yea, I think I heard of that happenin' once or twice around L.A. And… you want me to do what exactly?" He found the paper bag he'd brought his supper home in and got busy pretending to scribble notes on it, because straight-chick uniform, makeup supposed to look like no makeup or whatever, here came that old well-known hard-on Shasta was always good for sooner or later. Does it ever end, he wondered. Of course it does. It did. Thomas Pynchon's next novel, the 416-page Inherent Vice, is described by Penguin Press as "part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon — private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog." While we wait for its August 4 publication, we can read an essay on the dystopian musical he co-wrote at Cornell or watch a clip of that movie they made of Gravity's Rainbow. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Feb 6, 2009 - 76 comments

Early Female Authors of Hard-Boiled Fiction. Chester Himes and Early African-American Detective Novelists. The Detective's Code. The Femme Fatale. Just a few of the many fascinating offerings at detnovel.com.
posted by mediareport on Dec 8, 2008 - 4 comments

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. There has been so much of this sort of thing that if a character in a detective story says, "Yeah," the author is automatically a Hammett imitator. Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder" (1950)
posted by Navelgazer on Sep 24, 2008 - 8 comments

It's Telly Friday, baby.
posted by miss lynnster on Dec 14, 2007 - 32 comments

Twenty hard-boiled pulp stories from a revived Black Mask Magazine. (Unfortunately, stories are mostly in PDF form.)
posted by klangklangston on Oct 10, 2007 - 10 comments

A creepy old man, known as Mr. Six, has spent the last couple of years dancing on commercials for Six Flags amusement parts. He's clearly a fake old man (a young person in makeup). So who plays Mr. Six? Six Flags won't say, many people speculate, but this guys thinks he knows.
posted by grumblebee on Jul 26, 2005 - 76 comments

A Glossary of HardBoiled Slang will allow you to understand such wonderful, alliterative phrases as:

"You dumb mug, get your mitts off the marbles before I stuff that mud-pipe down your mush - and tell your moll to hand over the mazuma."

Welcome to the world of HardBoiled Fiction. Take some time to brush up on the classics.
posted by vacapinta on Apr 27, 2002 - 18 comments

37 year old self-appointed detective fools potential pedophiles with usernames like "dadanddaughtersex." Not only is there no victim, there cannot not be a crime because of the woman's true age, and the method of 'baiting' pedophile suspects looks like a violation of one's civil rights. On top of that her pedophile website is quite the money-maker, churning $1,000 a month in advertising revenue. Illegal entrapment or civic minded vigilante? Obviously this is a touchy subject, but I can't see the different between this and a plain-clothed police officer asking everyone on the street if they want to buy illegal drugs or guns just for a quick bust.
posted by skallas on Jan 18, 2002 - 46 comments