The Obelisk

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Hard-Boiled Harrison: Pulp Chinatown, Occult Detection, and Howard’s Most Overlooked Character

Hard-Boiled Harrison: Pulp Chinatown, Occult Detection, and Howard’s Most Overlooked Character

The Arbo Files

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Arbogast
Feb 02, 2022
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The Obelisk
The Obelisk
Hard-Boiled Harrison: Pulp Chinatown, Occult Detection, and Howard’s Most Overlooked Character
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Cover of Steve Harrison’s Casebook (2011)

Pulp detective fiction writers always used Chinatown as shorthand for exoticism and danger. Although physically inside of all-American cities like San Francisco or New York, the Chinatowns of Black Mask and other publications are depicted as a liminal space wherein the rules of the cop-and-crook game do not appl…

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