Think Hammett Never Wrote About Baltimore?

Think again. For Baltimore, Dashiell Hammett, who learned the detective trade in the local Pinkerton office, created the anti-Bond before there was a Bond. In The Assistant Murderer we meet Rush - Alec Rush, the world's ugliest detective. A man with a bulldog's face, a croaking voice, the body and moves of a bear, and a golden smile. Welcome to Baltimore, Hon!

Hammett's favorite among his five novels was The Glass Key, set in an unnamed east coast city. If the city isn't Baltimore and it's train station Mount Royal Station, I'll eat my fedora.

For a Baltimore short story homage to Hammett here's
A Bad Day at the Office.

The Perils of Being a Restaurant Critic

The Baltimore Sun recently brought on board a new restaurant critic after the retirement of their previous restaurant columnist of thirty years. Then the editors asked him to do a 50 Best Restaurants article. Oh, the horror! Into the valley of death rode Richard Gorelick, where he omitted one of the best loved restaurants in the city. Unsaid restaurant, Tio Pepe, thereby received more free positive publicity, due to the ensuing chorus of outrage, than it would have gotten if it had been listed at #1.

The restaurant is one of my daughter Kristen's favorites, as well as mine and her mother's.

Kristen took up her keyboard to avenge the dishonor of her beloved Tio. Still receiving no satisfaction, relentless in the pursuit of justice for Tio Pepe, she cornered the doomed Richard Gorelick, live on the air at WYPR and demanded that he stand and deliver.

You can see her written inquisition as the number 2 response as posted here by Richard Gorelick in his blog.

Anybody Else Here Feel Cold?

Last December we had a good size early season snow storm, then the February blizzard that broke all previous records for storm and seasonal snow accumulation. Now in December again we are having unseasonably cold weather, while London and Paris are snowed in and setting records lows for this time of year. Gasoline is headed for $3.00+ and heating oil prices are rising as fast as the temperature is falling. Good thing we're calling it climate change now instead of global warming. All bets are covered. Of course it could be I'm just getting old. Where are those damned wool socks?

Out on the Town in DC

Last Sunday I went over to DC, met my friend Bob Moriarty at the Hirshhorn Museum, aka “The Donut,” saw a screening of John Garfield in the 1948 noir film, Force of Evil, at the National Gallery, then had dinner in Chinatown - a good outing on an unseasonably cold and windy evening. The Hirshhorn is on the site formerly occupied by the Army Medical Museum, always a mandatory stop for area boys on any trip downtown when we were kids. Didn't see the human artifact of urban legend this trip either.

The Scene of the Crime

About that body in Leakin Park....the scene of the crime. Usually they are killed elsewhere and dumped in the park. Not this time. http://tinyurl.com/ce2aps

A Walk in the Park

Went for a walk in Baltimore's Leakin Park on Sunday. Didn't trip over any bodies. Did see a deer near the scene of the photo. That's a wetlands boardwalk, so I could cross dry shod over damp but holy ground. Meanwhile, a few hundred yards away, the Nature Center was burglarized over the weekend by...two enterprising local youths. http://tinyurl.com/2dwhtdy

The Green Eyed Monster at 87

An 87 year-old Miami man shot and killed his 84 year-old girlfriend, whom he suspected of cheating on him. And then, as often happens in these cases, he failed in his suicide attempt. Yes people, it is crazy out there - and sad.

Tough Lit

My story, A Bad Day at the Office, comes back as a reprint in a speclal "Tough Lit" issue of Adventures for the Average Woman.

BSP - Short-Story.me

Ok, so it's a few weeks later than previously advertised, but my short story, Calling Cards, is now up at the Short-Story.me! webzine.

A Friday the 13th publication date fits this story.

Shameless Cross Promotion

Every blog is a form of self promotion, but when other venues publish your work, shameless promotion of those publications is the symbiotic thing to do.

This month I have a triple play promtion of three very different magazines publishing my work.

Urbanite, a Baltimore magazine, has a short nonfiction piece I wrote in it's July issue under the What You're Writing section. If you are local, you can pick up a copy at one of their boxes. If you're not lucky enough to live in Baltimore, you can find it here.

Adventures for the Average Woman, out of Portland, Maine, has my crime/revenge short story, Remember Me, in it's summer issue.

Short-Story.Me a webzine for genre fiction is featuring my noir mystery short story, Calling Cards, sometime later this month.

Shamelss Cross Promtion

Not that every blog isn't some form of shameless self promotion, but when another venue publishes your work, you must return the favor and shamelessly promote them.
it's the symbiotic thing to do. This month I am promoting a triple play.

Urbanite, a Baltimore magazine has short piece of my nonfiction in it's What Your're Writing feature, in the July issue. If your're local, you can pick up a copy at one of their boxes around town. If you are not lucky enough to live in Baltimore, you can check it out here.

"It's the family, stupid."

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.explains the domestic economy, and domestic politics too.

The Night of the Hunter

I saw this classic 1955 movie for the first time last week. Charles Laughton directed Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish in a highly stylized parable set along the Ohio River during the Depression. Filmed in black and white with dream like sets and lighting, populated by Norman Rockwell characters with serious Freudian complexes, the cinematography is done in a style that brings to mind the photographs of Baltimore’s A. Aubrey Bodine. Robert Mitchum’s creepy character, “Preacher” Harry Powell, dispatches his victims with a switchblade knife. Its sexual symbolism is so obvious that at times it was hard at times to suppress a laugh. To paraphrase Freud: “Sometimes a switchblade is just a switchblade.” The showdown between Mitchum’s murderous con man and Lillian Gish’s resolute, shotgun wielding maternal protector of orphans, who cannot be conned or cowed, caps a great film.

Half Measures

I’m told the KidsPost in today’s Washington Post is a mere half page. Shrinking to the size of the audience I suppose, half pages for half pints.

Baltimore Blizzard Baby Boom - November 2010

If the Baltimore-Washington region doesn't have a Post Blizzard Baby Boom in November 2010 I will eat Frosty's magic hat. Love will find a way.

A White On White Criminal Assault By Mother Nature

Back to back blizzards in the Baltimore-Washington region, with even more snow on the horizon, are beginning to feel like a crime wave of serial assaults by Mother Nature. With no sign of the usual February thaw, this month may be white from wall to wall in what is becoming the long winter of 2010. A positive side effect is the sense of neighborhood solidarity as we dig out together and life is reduced to pedestrian activities. Crime has pretty much been reduced to domestic assaults in unhappy homes with well stocked liquor cabinets.

Now We Know Where the Glaciers Disappeared To

Global warming south of the Mason-Dixon line. Thunder snow, you gotta love it.