Bloody Fingerprints

Slippery Fingers by Dashiell Hammett (1923)

Tuesday’s Detective Tale       Tuesday, April 27, 2021

 

How about reading an old-fashioned murder mystery? Why do we love murder mysteries with snappy detectives or even bumbling detectives? Maybe killers are fascinating. Maybe cheeky detectives beating after the killers are fascinating. Or maybe we love living vicariously inside the killer or detective’s head for an hour or two. I’m betting on the third reason for most of us. Come on, there must be somebody in your life you’ve had moments where you wanted to kill that person and get away with it. Everybody has a  killer inside them according to noir detectives. Noir fiction is filled with greed,  lust, or juicy jealousy; femmes fatales in seedy bars, guys drinking cheap gin, and everything is shrouded in cigarette smoke.  Nobody does this better than author Dashiell Hammett (except maybe Raymond Chandler, my favorite); the prose is sparse and the storytelling exact.

In Slippery Fingers, we have a dead body, Frederick Grover, stabbed in the throat with a brass paperknife, in the library, and found by the butler Barton. Murder during a burglary, you say? No dice. Blackmail maybe? A lovers quarrel? Naa. How about the butler did it? That cliche will kill the reader. Maybe we should follow the money-spending of Mr. Grover … and fingerprints.

 

 

 

Dashiell Hammett (1894 – 1961) the master of detective fiction, an American writer who created the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. Pulp magazines, films, television, Hammett’s most famous titles are The Glass Key, The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon. His most memorable characters were the Continental Op, Nick and Nora Charles, and Sam Spade.

Read the short story here:

https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/Hammett_Slippery_Fingers.pdf

Listen to the audio here (25 minutes). This is a very entertaining audio!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vec6iW6bak 

 

 

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, romance, and mainstream fiction.

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Discover Author of the Week posted on Mondays!

Author of the Week, James Herbert, April 19

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK   April 19

James Herbert

(Novels and Short Stories, Supernatural, Ghost Stories, Horror)

 

 

“I’m never going to win the Booker and I have no great literary pretensions, but I know how to write well. I do it the old-fashioned way with a pen and paper and I know my spelling and grammar.”

“I have a dread of sounding pretentious and try not to talk too much about what I do. Sometimes, though, it is necessary to point it out: I’m not just in it for the gore.”

“To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden.”

“I’ve actually seen a ghost, so I know what they are really about.”

 

James Herbert (1943 – 2013) was an English author of the supernatural and popular for his horror fiction. He sold 54 million books that were translated into 34 languages. His best known novels are The Fog, The Survivor, and The Dark. Also the Ghosts of Sleath, The Secret of Crickley Hall , The Dark. Some of his novels were adapted for film, television, and radio. Herbert’s final novel Ash imagines Princess Diana and her secret son as well as Lord Lucan, Colonel Gaddafi and Robert Maxwell living together in a Scottish castle. Stephen King said of Herbert’s stories, “His work has a raw urgency.”

 

Interview by Terry Wogan with James Herbert. True horror fans will love this!

 

BBC interviews James Herbert on his experiences with ghosts.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/19463081

 

James Herbert Amazon Page:

https://www.amazon.com/James-Herbert/e/B000AP90NS

 

Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author every week at Reading Fiction Blog! And browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 200 free short stories by over 100 famous authors.

Once a month I feature a FREE short story by contemporary and classic authors.

Wild Darkness, a Short Story, Kindle Single

Greetings to All!

 

Quick note to let you know my short story Wild Darkness is now a Kindle Single on Amazon.com.

Agatha Ashfield, a wise woman in her late years, has long been fascinated by the power of Nature. She meets a ghost called Falling Water who dwells beneath the hickory trees by Mohawk River. As Agatha seeks her destiny, she struggles to overcome fears of her impending death, find a way to trust goodness, the power of Nature, and release her everlasting consciousness. This is a short tale of mystery, love, passion, and spirituality. If you enjoy exploring the spiritual world and its realms, you will enjoy entering Agatha’s mysterious Wild Darkness.

“Fluent, descriptive, mysterious, and yes, at times creepy, it is an unusual ghost story.” Andrew M. Seddon, author of What Darkness Remains.

Wild Darkness was originally published at literary journal ParABnormal in March 2020.

 

Stop by to read more reviews!  Just released this month.

 

 

Wild Darkness … the force of nature, the force of death, the force of consciousness. A short story of Agatha Ashfield who explores the spiritual realms of ghosts. Come meet Falling Water, the ghost beneath the hickory trees on Mohawk River.

On Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Darkness-Short-Paula-Cappa-ebook/dp/B091ZG227C

 

On Smashwords.com:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1078098

 

Many thanks to all who follow me here and comment at Reading Fiction Blog.  I now have over 1700 followers. My readers have grown over the past eight years. Much appreciation to everyone!

 

Paula

Author of the Week, Francine Prose, April 12

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK  April 12

 

Francine Prose

(Novels, Short Stories, Essayist, Nonfiction)

 

 

“If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see them the way that a rose gardener would.”

“There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.”

“The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.”

Francine Prose (born 1947)  is an American author of twenty-one works of fiction, including the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. She is Visiting Professor of Literature at Bard College, and  formerly president of PEN. Prose is well known for her New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. Her newest book is a collection of essays, What to Read and Why.

Interview with Francine Prose, Harvard Magazine:

https://harvardmagazine.com/2010/09/a-garden-of-prose

 

Interview with Francine at Miami Book Fair:

Reviews

“Francine Prose is a keen observer, and her fiction is full of wryly delivered truths and sardonic witticisms that come from paying close attention to the world.” —The Atlantic

“Francine Prose has a knack for getting to the heart of human nature.” —USA Today

 

Visit Francine Prose Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FJ32YLG

 

Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author every week at Reading Fiction Blog! And browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 200 free short stories by over 100 famous authors.

Once a month I feature a FREE short story by contemporary and classic authors.

 

Author of the Week, Robert Bloch, April 5

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK   April 5

Robert Bloch

(Short Stories and Novels: Crime, Horror, Science Fiction Writer)

 

 

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

“Horror is the removal of masks.”

“There’s a great desire to communicate, I think, on the part of all of us. And if we are in situations where the communication is difficult due to difficult circumstances or shyness or an introversion, this is a wonderful outlet. And a direct one.”

 

Robert Albert Bloch (1917 — 1994) was a prolific American writer. Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories, over twenty novels of crime and science fiction, but was most famous for his horror fiction Psycho.

Bloch was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle, a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career.  He received a Hugo Award  for That Hell-Bound Train, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. A good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum, Bloch wrote three stories for Star Trek.

Listen to Bloch’s Psycho, an audio preview of the novel (15 minutes):

 

Interested in the backstory, the inspiration for Psycho? Read it here at Galaxy Press about the Butcher of Plainfield:

The Backstory to Robert Bloch’s “Psycho”

 

“Horror is not about supernatural forces or things that go bump in the night; horror is about the fear we have within, buried deep in our brains.”

Read more at Lit Reactor about Robert Bloch: https://litreactor.com/columns/footnotes-psycho

 

 

 

More at Bloch Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Bloch/e/B001K6Q4QW

 

Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author every week at Reading Fiction Blog! And browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 200 free short stories by over 100 famous authors.

Once a month I feature a FREE short story by contemporary and classic authors.