A party for eleven of the writers who sold stories to Black Mask, January 11, 1936. The man standing second from left with the pipe is Raymond Chandler, and the tall man who looks like he's gripping a chair so he won't fall over is Dashiell Hammett. This is the only time these two ever met. Chandler would say later that Hammett was a nice guy with a fearful capacity for Scotch, quite the observation coming from him. Chandler had just started selling stories after being fired from the oil business, and Hammett was an established writer. Best known for The Maltese Falcon, my favorite by him is Red Harvest, where his unnamed operative for the Continental Detective Agency comes to a savagely corrupt small town and plays both sides of the conflict against each other. It was made into the unforgettable movie Yojimbo by Kurosawa and starred Toshiro Mifune. 'I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey ...