Sfinkso

A busy busy day, really full of going to people's houses and talking. But with a real look at the women attached to the hapless boundary pushers.

Miriam, all dressed in pink, has a sort of respect for what criminals are, and resents how Art is betraying both law abiders and law revilers, not to mention his philandering hopes.

Alice Quinn, forlornly believing in staying in a marriage for the money, bitter and weary as her husband drinks and runs about with younger women. Perhaps a vision of Miriam's future, a reflection in another echelon of society.

But the real monsters, despite the madhouse of the pig iron club, are the Wynants, calculating, recalibrating, and scheming, by god always scheming! I like seeing how Mimi is divided into Gil and Dorry. The helplessness, bright blue eyes beseeching as they try to accomplish their respective goals. The sociopathic reduction of other people into objects of investigation and manipulation.

Navigating all this is tiring, and its so much data and viewpoints to hold in one's brain. I can see why Nick just wants to sit down, drink something and eat a Ruben sandwich.

Hefty data in this day, a bunch of people finding things out for Nick, and then quoting exactly what they know to him.

The Packer segment always intrigued me when I first read it, because I thought: we have the Wynant siblings together for the first time, but we are interrupting this for a wild west segment of cannibalism in the snow? Why?

I guess it's an illustration of lying about one's actions, even as they are discovered in the midst of new crimes. Its thematic, in a grisly way. I wonder if it was just a meme of Hammett's day, or if he liked researching celebrated crimes. Probably the latter, as he was a crime writer and ex detective.

Studsy and the Pig-Iron club remains a favorite, this tough old brick of a man running a little speakeasy, talking to wanted men and serving bad champagne, what a way to live. I forget that it is seen empty at first, and they can have a normal conversing.

Similar to Packer, there is historical violence brought to mind, but its of a more sporting nature, the offer to duel again, with similar constraints, there is the respect between the two.

Its all done through pregnant pauses of silent understanding, but Art Nunheim being outed as a rat to the underworld seems almost like Nick heartlessly signing a death warrant. Perhaps its a spiteful revenge for sending Morello his way. A lack of respect, unlike Studsy.

This story is so much a 'People go over to peoples' houses and talk' but they add violence in the recent past or in the immediate present.

The big event of course is the presaged entry of dapperly clad criminal Shep Morrelli. I always imagined this happening in the dead of night in the single digit hours, but its a gun and fight in the leisurely 10 am when the cops arrive. Daylight seems such an odd component to this sequence of cocktails and gatherings.

The perpetual visitor Dorothy is back in damaged fettle, but she is a great viewpoint into other parties schemes, now that Nick is embarked on his quest to 'sift the murder' as the tabloids would have it.

The monolith of brutality that the cops bring, especially with the sandstone man that is John Guild, and the lack of social graces as they traipse across the hotel room, it always helps distinguish their method from gentleman sleuths such as the charleses.

The duels of Mimi and Nick are delightful, and out me in mind of various animal bloodsports, bullfighting, lion/tiger taming. I enjoy that this is now the start of really engaging with the Gothic nonsense that the Wynant-Jorgensens are stuck in, and Nick is taking a hard look at them now.

Here we see the circles in which our fair drama will take place, the Wynant-Jorgensen household, the speakeasy, and the parties that never end.

Some primo cracking wise in this day, three times he is beseeched, by the ghost of dames past (Mimi), dames present (Nora), and of dames perhaps to come (Dorothy)? Spurious connection? Yes.

There's a nice shift in tone as Nick reacts to violence, the inarticulate actions of Nora and Nick, seguing into 'What kind of clowning is this?'. The implication that Dorothy is not even one of the better known clowns of 30s New York requires further study.

I'm uncool, I know, because I keep noticing how late to bed everyone is, and how late to rise they are in turn.

I always imagined Mimi as some cross between Marilyn Monroe and a Betty boop-esque character, in that affected guilelessness.

Alice Quinn mention!

Nick won $756 at backgammon! What thr hell!