Merry Christmas!

(South 13th Street, Philadelphia, by your humble blogkeeper)

"`A fellow who'd worked for him accused him of stealing some kind of idea or invention from him. Rosewater was his name. He tried to shake Wynant down by threatening to shoot him, bomb his house, kidnap his children, cut his wife's throat — I don't know what all — if he didn't come across. We never caught him — must've scared him off. Anyway, the threats stopped and nothing happened.'

"Nora stopped drinking to ask: `Did Wynant really steal it?'

"`Tch, tch, tch,' I said. `This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man.'"

— Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

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Put some noir in your Christmas at Do Some Damage.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Free crime for Christmas

If you're wracked by the recession or strapped by Christmas giving, here are four links that could keep you reading for a while and all for the right price: free.

They are Project Gutenberg's Crime Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Detective Fiction and Crime Nonfiction Bookshelves, and they offer free versions of classics to read or download by people like E.W. Hornung, creator of Raffles; Maurice Leblanc (Arsene Lupin), Poe, Dickens, John Buchan, E.C. Bentley, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Roberts Rinehart, G.K. Chesterton, Baroness Orczy (The Old Man In the Corner, The Scarlet Pimpernel), Joseph Conrad, Wilkie Collins, and many more, including some guy named Dostoyesvsky.

Season's greetings to all, and thanks to the good people at Project Gutenberg.

Now, it's your turn: What good no-cost gifts can you think of for the crime-fiction fan on your list?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009