Hard-Boiled Gazetteer: San Francisco.

Ott, Bill (author).

Our Hard-Boiled Gazetteer series has avoided San Francisco for the last 11 years, mainly out of timidity. There is just too much going on in the City by the Bay to fit it into this kind of overview. But we couldn’t procrastinate any longer; the more we wait, the more San Francisco–based series emerge, and the harder the task becomes. That said, it’s time for caveats. We’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg here, so be gracious with your criticisms of who was left out. Our emphasis, as the title suggests, is always on the hard-boiled side of the scale, so the many cozy series set in San Francisco have largely gone unmentioned. So have historical series, at least those taking place before the post–World War II era. We’ve also, for reasons of space only, left off the greater Bay Area, especially Berkeley, scene of numerous outstanding quasi-cozy or domestic series (especially those by Susan Dunlap). For readers interested in a more far-reaching scan of mysteries set in San Francisco and environs, go immediately to a wonderful Web site called Golden Gate Mysteries (http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/sfmystery/), maintained by the reigning expert on the topic, Randal Brandt, from the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Brandt covers the waterfront, from the nineteenth century to yesterday.

You simply can’t write about hard-boiled crime fiction in San Francisco without genuflecting at the outset in the direction of Dashiell Hammett—not only because his greatest stories were set in the city but also because he pretty much invented the hard-boiled style: “Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping down to Chinatown, Spade paid his fare and left the taxicab.” That’s Hammett describing Sam Spade on the way to investigate the murder of his partner. Those words not only set the scene for what is to follow in The Maltese Falcon, Hammett’s masterpiece (and the subject of Keir Graff’s “Another Look At” feature), but they also left a road map for the generations of hard-boiled writers who would follow Hammett: use details and plenty of them, not just strewn about like window dressing but rendered with unyielding precision. You find those details in The Maltese Falcon, of course, but also in the Continental Op stories, where often-anonymous gumshoes get in and of cabs where Bush roofs Stockton, or somewhere similar, described with the same kind of no-nonsense language.

Maybe it’s all about the fog, but it seems inevitable that San Francisco would give birth to the hard-boiled style and, later, to make an equally appropriate home for noir, the hard-boiled novel’s black-sheep cousin. Many of the writers in the list that follows are direct descendants of Hammett—Joe Gores, especially—but others, like Domenic Stansberry, take the Hammett tradition, lace it with a bleaker, noir sensibility, and then add a contemporary twist that makes it all seem as if it was invented yesterday to fit today’s world. But it still happens on those same streets, drenched now in history, not only of real people but also of generations of crime novels.

There are also San Francisco mysteries that pay less direct homage to Hammett and his mean streets. The city has become, for example, a hotbed for legal thrillers, novels that capture the issues of the day in scenes that often play themselves out in high-rise office buildings, 50 floors or so above Bush and Stockton. And yet, even in these very different San Francisco novels, the roots peek through, overtly in Dismas Hardy, John Lescroart’s hard-drinking maverick lawyer, and more subtly in the tough-minded lawyer heroes in Lia Matera’s two series starring Willa Jansson and Laura Di Palma, respectively.

Critics and reviewers write about place in crime fiction all the time—usually saying little of substance—but the fact remains that, in way too many mystery novels, the settings tend to be generic: the cozy village is the same cozy village, and the mean streets are dimly lit by the same dim light bulbs. Maybe San Francisco has remained such a rich landscape for so long because you can’t write about this city that way. There is very little sameness to its streets, so the writer who sets a crime novel in San Francisco will never get by on stock descriptions. What follows is a list of series that have met the challenge of their setting.

Allen Choice series, by Leonard Chang
Representative title: Fade to Clear. 2004. St. Martin’s/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-30845-0).

Korean American sleuth Allen Choice is one of the loopier heroes in crime fiction. In this adventure, he’s moving away from his former worldview, which he calls “removement,” and trying to adopt a “philosophy of emotional engagement.” Cue his icky ex-wife to arrive on the doorstep, asking him to find her wicked stepsister’s missing kid. It’s a case with fiasco written all over it, but the determined-to-be-engaged Allen plows right in. Dopey charm wins the day for this unconventional sleuth.

Billy Nichols series, by Eddie Muller
Representative title: The Distance. 2002. Scribner, $24 (0-7432-1443-9).

In 1947, Billy Nichols, head sportswriter for the San Franciso Examiner, makes a split-second decision to cover for a boxer who murdered his manager. Muller, a film noir expert, nails the tone here: the tightening noose of circumstance around the hero’s neck, as well as the special ambience of ringside sweat, streets lit by buzzing red neon, and the earthshaking clamor of the newspaper composing room.

Curly Watkins series, by Jim Nisbet
Representative title: The Octopus on My Head. 2007. Dennis McMillan, $35 (9780939767571).

OK, it’s wishful thinking to say that there is going to be a Curly Watkins series—Nisbet usually sticks with stand-alones—but here’s hoping he makes an exception in this case. Watkins, a bald jazz guitar player with an octopus tattoo on his head and a propensity for landing in the wrong place at the very worst of times, is just too great a character to part with after only one book. And what a book: a drug-fueled chase around San Francisco and the East Bay in search of, well . . . heroin, money, and survival, for starters.

Daniel Kearney series, by Joe Gores
Representative title: Cons, Scams & Grifts. 2001. Mysterious, $24.94 (0-892965-94-0).

Gores’ series is as close as you can come to a modern-day version of Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op stories. The clipped, no-nonsense, practical prose is pure Hammett, and the focus—not on a lonely detective but on the the various employees of a firm of investigators—perfectly captures the workaday world of the hired gumshoe, the milieu that so defined the Op stories. As in Hammett’s tales, the streets of San Francisco are always underfoot, as Kearney and his employees run down, well . . . cons, scams, and grifts.

A Danny Kestrel novel, by Jim Nisbet
The Syracuse Codex. 2005. Dennis McMillan, $35 (0-939767-52-X).

San Francisco picture framer Danny Kestrel meets a girl, the girl gets murdered, and before you can say Da Vinci Code, he’s up to his armpits in a blood-strewn adventure centering on a Roman artifact being sought by a band of adventurers right out of The Maltese Falcon. What have we here: a bibliothriller dirtied up for the noir crowd, or a full-frontal satire of the San Franciso art scene? Well, both of those, and much more, too, but most of all, it’s an over-the-top piece of bravura storytelling.

Dante Mancuso series, by Domenic Stansberry
Representative title: The Ancient Rain. 2008. St. Martin’s/Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312364533).

If Joe Gores re-creates the past, Stansberry represents the future of San Francisco crime fiction. His Dante Mancuso series, starring a melancholy detective with roots reaching deep into the history of North Beach, revitalizes the classic detective story, injecting it with a noir sensibility that both evokes the old masters and seems altogether new. His latest, about a case that stretches back to the Symbionese Liberation Army, is his best yet.

Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitzky series, by John Lescroart
Representative title: The Second Chair. 2004. Dutton, $25.95 (0-525-94775-2).

This is no garden-variety legal thriller series. Hardy is a hard-drinking San Francisco lawyer who would rather hang out in Irish pubs sipping Guinness than fraternize with his Mercedes-driving peers. And, best of all, he does his investigating in tandem with a street-smart cop, Glitzky, now a higher-up in the SFPD but still true to his pavement-pounding roots.

Emma Victor series, by Mary Wings
Representative title: She Came to the Castro. 1997. Berkley/Prime Crime, $21.95 (0-425-15629-X).

Wings’ irreverent lesbian detective Emma Victor has landed a nasty case: act as a go-between for a gay-friendly San Francisco mayoral candidate who is being blackmailed. It’s the backdrop that’s the most fun here: the city’s gay and lesbian film festival at the Castro theater.

Frank Hastings series, by Collin Wilcox
Representative title: Calculated Risk. 1995. Holt, $22 (0-8050-3003-4).

Wilcox died in 1996 after writing more than 30 books, 6 of which starred San Francisco homicide detective Hastings. His final case may be his best: a haunting story about an AIDS sufferer, his partner, and a blackmailing scheme involving the drug AZT. Hastings is an intricately drawn cop defined by his inability to separate his work from the rest of his life.

A Harry Jordan novel, by Charles Willeford
Pick-Up.1955. Blackmask.com, paper, $14.95 (9781596542242).

“My name is Harry Jordan. I’m thirty-two years of age, and when I’m not working, I drink.” “My name is Helen Meredith. I’m thirty-three years of age, and I don’t work at all. I drink all the time.” That—and the fact that Charles Willeford wrote those words, and the fact that the story is set in San Francisco in the 1950s—is all you need to know about this cut-from-the-bone noir.

Jack Diamond series, by J. L. Abramo
Representative title: Clutching at Straws. 2003. St. Martin’s/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $22.95 (0-312-30849-3).

This one has the feel of Stephen Greenleaf’s Marsh Tanner series (see below). Diamond is a hard-boiled detective with a soft-boiled heart, something of a literary type who likes to tie in classic novels to the action at hand. Light on action and suspense but tasty comfort food for PI fans, with lots of ambient SF scenery.

Jane Candiotti series, by Clyde Phillips
Representative title: Sacrifice. 2003. Morrow, $24.95 (0-06-621237-5).

We’d like to see more from this hard-hitting procedural series starring two SFPD cops who happen to be married: Jane is a lieutenant, and her husband, Kenny, works for her. Relationship issues take center stage here, but there is a toughness, too, almost a John Harvey flair for combining the grit of the work with the ambiguity of the personal lives.

Jo Beckett series, by Meg Gardiner
Representative title: The Dirty Secrets Club. 2008. Dutton, $24.95 (9780525950660).

San Francisco forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett dissects the lives of murder victims, attempting to determine why the dead get dead. Here she investigates, with the help of SFPD detective Amy Tang, a series of murder-suicides connected to the Dirty Secrets Club—a group promising anonymity to public figures aching to confess their sins. This is the U.S. debut for London-resident Gardiner. Look for more.

John Marshall Tanner series, by Stephen Greenleaf
Representative title: Past Tense. 1997. Scribner, $22 (0-684-83249-6).

One of the most consistently entertaining hard-boiled series of the 1980s and 1990s, the Marsh Tanner novels are old school all the way. Tanner is a bit of a throwback (like Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker), and he makes a wonderful sarcastic counterpoint to the trendy side of San Francisco. Greenleaf stopped writing the series in 2000; keep hoping for a comeback.

Kate Martinelli series, by Laurie King
Representative title: The Art of Detection. 2006. Bantam, paper, $6.99 (0-553-58833-8).

Better known for her Mary Russell novels, costarring Sherlock Holmes, King also writes a contemporary San Francisco series starring police detective Martinelli. Here she cleverly combines both series with an impeccably constructed plot about the murder of a fanatic Holmes buff. There is also lots of rich domestic drama involving Martinelli, her partner Leonara, and their daughter.

Michael Daley and Rosie Fernandez series, by Sheldon Siegel
Representative title: The Confession. 2004. Putnam, $25.95 (0-399-15212-1)

Siegel’s always satisfying legal-thriller series stars one of the more unusual couples in the genre: ex-priest Daley and his ex-wife, Fernandez, who are now law partners. In this episode, they defend a maverick priest accused of killing a parishoner. Strong courtroom scenes combine with a fascinating look at the upper levels of San Franciso’s Catholic community.

Nameless Detective series, by Bill Pronzini
Representative title: Mourners. 2006. Forge, paper, $6.99 (0-7653-4926-4).

Two quintessential contemporary San Francisco mystery series are created by a husband and wife: Pronzini’s Nameless Detective novels and Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone series. The Nameless series is unmatched in the genre for the way its hero has evolved over the years. There is no formula to this series, but this installment captures a theme that reappears throughout: the many forms of grief and the different ways we mourn. (See Story behind the Story for more on Pronzini and his latest Nameless novel.)

Nick Polo series, by Jerry Kennealy
Representative title: Beggar’s Choice. 1994. St. Martin’s, $20.95 (0-312-11478-8).

Kennealy is a real-life private eye, and it shows in his detailed descriptions of surveillance and information gathering. This is a solid hard-boiled series out of the Chandler-Hammett school, and each episode is filled with lots of city locales, this time drawing on the subterranean world of panhandlers.

A Nicollo Jones novel, by Domenic Stansberry
The Last Days of Il Duce. 1998. St. Martin’s/Minotaur, paper, $12.95 (0-312-25463-6).

Think of this searing noir tale of murder and doomed lovers as a kind of prelude to Stansberry’s Dante Mancuso series. Failed lawyer Nicollo Jones, burning with love for his brother’s wife, lets life pass him by as the family’s Italian neighborhood in North Beach changes in front of his eyes. Then his brother is murdered, and Nicollo investigates a crime with ties to a scandal stretching back to Mussolini. Like James M. Cain, Stansberry writes prose as raw as an exposed nerve.

Sharon McCone series, by Marcia Muller
Representative title: The Ever-Running Man. 2007. Warner, $24.95 (9780446582421).

Muller’s Sharon McCone was among the first women private detectives in the classic hard-boiled tradition, and her series, now 31 years old, is still going strong. McCone, like the Nameless Detective, has steadily evolved over the life of the series, and Muller has consistently tackled the social issues of the day while carefully grounding her novels in the ever-changing face of San Francisco.

Scott Weiss series, by Andrew Klavan
Representative title: Damnation Street. 2006. Harvest, $14 (9780156032629).

Like Dominic Stansberry, Klavan takes the essence of the hard-boiled world—in this case, a hard-drinking PI, a whore with a heart of gold, and plenty of blood, rain, and long nights behind the wheel—and places it all in contemporary San Francisco, but the fnished product never seems imitative or retro. That’s no surprise: the best crime writers of any generation keep reinventing the classic tropes and finding new life in the most evocative of landscapes.

San Francisco novels, by Peter Plate
Representative title: Fogtown. 2004. Seven Stories, paper, $13 (9781583226391).

Something of a local celebrity at book fairs and author readings, Plate taught himself to write during eight years squatting in abandoned buildings. His raw novels, slices-of-the-underlife on San Francisco’s streets, are firmly in the Charles Bukowski tradition. This one, about a group of transients living around Market Street who stumble on a truck full of money, may be the most memorable.

Willa Jansson series, by Lia Matera
Representative title: Last Chants. 1996. Simon & Schuster, paper, $13.95 (9781416567691).

Jansson is the author of both the Willa Jansson and Laura Di Palma series, each starring San Francisco lawyers. This episode of the Jansson series effectively combines the seemingly incongruous plot elements of high-tech computing and ancient mythology.