I really like the cover for this collection —
— but why pick Dashiell Hammett to select the stories (or stick his name on the cover even if he didn’t)? While he’s a major hardboiled novelist, it’s not as if he has any particular rep as a horror writer or reader I know of so what does he bring to the table?
I thought it might be that this was a set of horror stories by detective writers, but it includes familiar names such as H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei and John Collier. So what’s the angle?
(Why yes, Thanksgiving activities did get in the way of a longer blog post, so this is the best I could do)
#SFWApro. Art is uncredited.
It seems even weirder that the pull quote is from Leland E Glover. Apparently Glover wrote “How to help your teenager grow up” https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5523696.Leland_E_Glover What makes Glover someone you want a quote from?
That is a very good question indeed.
frasersherman: Could have gone with Mickey Spillane. 🙂
Some of Alfred Hitchcock’s anthologies went from suspense into horror.
That’s the best connection I can come up with.
Someone else made the same suggestion elsewhere online.
It’s not a great connection — Hammett hardly screamed Suspense! let alone Horror! the way Hitch’s name did (especially after Psycho) — but I can’t think of anything else either.
I don’t think it’s a great connection, either, but it’s all I could come up with.
You know a lot more about this stuff than I do – so if you can’t think of it, I can’t think of it.
My guess is that somebody at the publisher’s office knew Hammett, and figured slapping his name on a cover would lend legitimacy to the effort and maybe sell a few books, and was able to make a deal on the cheap.
Goodreads says The Red Brain is a cut down reprint of Creeps by Night which has more material in it https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7248570-the-red-brain
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13632058-creeps-by-night and Creeps by Night starts with an essay by Hammett which might explain things but I can’t find an online version of it to check.
Thank you. Perhaps you’ve found the answer, even if we can’t get the complete answer.