The whipcracking Miss Feisty has us gearing up for the blog noir series, so I’ve lept into a Dashell Hammett refresher. As morose as this seems, his obituary seems worth sharing, since we are paying tribute to his genre:

He was a gentle man who wrote about underworld toughs. . .

He stood up to McCarthyism in the best tradition of his own tough-minded heroes.

He was a heretic who could never stomach hypocrisy and sham, sanctimonious or callous, in high places or low.

He was the portrayer of the modern cynic to perfection, but he was as romantic as a schoolboy.

He was a master of lean dialogue, quick action, and the hard plotted story. He was an old pro.

He said of his writing: “The contemporary novelist’s job is to take the pieces of life and arrange them on paper, and the more direct their passage from street to paper the more lifelike they should turn out.” Writers, he said, should “make what is set down seem truly contemporary, to give the impression of things really happening here and now, to force upon the reader the feeling of immediacy.”

This is going to be one helluva body of work when the six of us are finished.