Hardboiled American Crime and Worldwide Noir Fiction discussion

I am requesting nominations for the Group Read for January 2021. Please select a hardboiled crime fiction work by any writer we have not yet read. The work nominated should be one published between 1930 and 1960, our genre's great years.

Actually, maybe some would like to explore the earlier years since we're starting a new year. I am going to expand that range back to 1920 then, the year The Black Mask began publication, in case someone wants to nominate a Carroll John Daly work, or something similar.

Please use the add book/author feature, if you can, so that I know exactly which work you're nominating. Nominations will stay open until mid-December.

I would like to nominate Knights of the Open Palm: Race Williams #1 by Carroll John Daly. I want to choose this particular book since it's short (just 67 pages), inexpensive ($1.99), and easy to obtain (especially for those with a Kindle).

Daly, the first hardboiled writer, was primitive in his style in many ways. It's easy to get overloaded if one reads too much of him at once. This collection won't do that since it has just three stories, good ones at that: "Dolly" (Oct. 1922) his first sale to The Black Mask, "The False Burton Combs" (Dec. 1922), often called the first hardboiled story ever written, and Daly's first story with his principal character Race Williams: "Knights of the Open Palm." Daly over the next thirty years or so would go on to publish over 50 short stories and eight novels featuring Race Williams, private investigator.

This first Race Williams short story appeared in the famous Ku Klux Klan issue of The Black Mask, June 1, 1923. Many, but not all, of the stories in this particular issue were anti-Klan. The magazine editors claimed to want to keep a neutral stance. The lead story, for example, "Call Out the Klan" by Herman Petersen is a sympathetic portrayal. Herman Petersen worked for the post office in upstate New York and makes for a fascinating study himself, came out with some good novels in the 1940s, but I digress. Daly's Race Williams character opposes the Klan. So I don't think any will find the story offensive.

Since no one has made another nomination I take it everyone is happy to read Knights of the Open Palm: Race Williams #1 by Carroll John Daly? I'll keep nominations open through the end of December 15, Tuesday. Please post here if you can think of a hardboiled book you'd prefer to read more next month.

Hello, Dan. I’m sorry I missed out on this one. I don’t think I received an email from you. I missed out on a lot of emails around this time.

I later found out that most of my emails were going straight into my junk folder. By this time most of them had expired.

Zain

It's not too late. I never close topics; well, not topics about books. The Daly book was three fairly interesting short stories. They're good to read if you want to trace the roots of the hardboiled genre. I didn't find any of them all that exceptional as stories on their own merit though.

Of the five books we have read so far, I gave the Hammett and the Cain four stars, Chandler and Daly three, and McCoy two. Cain's novel was my favorite in terms of readability, but I really liked Hammett's witty dialogue.