It only makes sense that the editor of a mystery magazine would get a kick out of doing what his fictional detectives do: solving puzzles, finding lost objects, bringing justice to the world.
Earlier this year, when Andrew Gulli was clicking through an online archive of the works of Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), author of tough, taciturn and influential crime novels such as “The Maltese Falcon” (1930) and “The Thin Man” (1934), he came across a batch of short stories that didn’t sound familiar. Gulli quickly realized what he’d discovered: unpublished works by the man who created Sam Spade and the Continental Op.
“It was a magical feeling,” says Gulli, managing editor of The Strand, now in its 12th year. The quarterly magazine is a resurrected version of the venerable detective journal published in London from 1891 to 1950, with pages populated by tales by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
Hammett’s papers are stored at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Gulli was exploring the archive one day — Hammett’s original manuscripts are scanned into the file, so scholars with Internet access can see them just as the author wrote them — when he stumbled across 15 stories that didn’t ring a bell. They’d never been published, Gulli realized. And they were very good.
Gulli will publish one of the stories, “So I Shot Him,” in the issue that goes on sale this week. “I chose this one because it was vintage Hammett — it starts slowly, then he ratchets up the tension,” he says. “The reader is furiously turning the pages to find out what the final twist is.”
Gulli is an old hand at giving legendary writers the last word: In previous issues, he has published unknown stories by Graham Greene, Mark Twain and Christie. Combining the best of famous dead writers with works by renowned living scribes such as Ray Bradbury and Colin Dexter has helped boost The Strand’s circulation past 55,000, Gulli says.
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And being based in Birmingham, Mich., instead of New York works well, he adds: “Our overhead is a fraction of what it would be in New York. With e-mail, you don’t have to go to lunch with publishers” in order to keep abreast of the literary world.
Gulli says he relishes the excitement of discovering a new work by a famous author. “There it was, with Hammett’s handwritten corrections,” he recalls. “It was like Dashiell Hammett had submitted a story to be published. I’m looking at something written 60 or 70 years ago — but here it is.”
For information about The Strand, check strandmag.com or call 800-300-6652.