O. Henry's Humor, Pathos, Drama And Irony: 'My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On 'O. Henry 101 Stories'

Back in October of 2021, I wrote about the late, great short story writer O. Henry in my Washington Times On Crime column. 

You can read the column via the below link or the below text:

BOOK REVIEW: 'O. Henry: 101 Stories' - Washington Times

Every Christmas season, I watch about a dozen or so favorite holiday films. One of them is “O. Henry’s Full House.” The 1952 film offers five adaptations of O. Henry’s great short stories with Christmas themes. The film features fine directors for each story, such as Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, Henry King, and notable actors as Charles Laughton, Fred Allen, and Marilyn Monroe. Author John Steinbeck is the film’s narrator.

 

The film highlights O. Henry’s humor, drama, pathos and irony. The stories presented in the film are “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” “The Cop and the Anthem,” “The Last Leaf,” and my favorite, “The Clarion Call.” The story stars Dale Robinson as a cop who is indebted to a crook portrayed by Richard Widmark.

 

O. Henry, the pen name of William Sidney Porter, has many admirers, like me, and those admirers will enjoy a new collection of his stories published by the Library of America, called “O. Henry: 101 Stories.” 

 

As crime is my primary interest and beat, I particularly love O. Henry’s short stories about crime. There are several crime stories in “O. Henry: 101 Stories,” such as the classic “A Retrieved Reformation,” “After Twenty Years,” and “The Girl and the Graft.” 

 

“O. Henry: 101 Stories” was edited by Ben Yagoda. He noted although that although O. Henry is mostly known for stories with a twist ending, such as “The Gift of the Magi,” the majority of his stories do not have surprise endings and are not sentimental. "O. Henry painted an almost ethnographic portrait of the American con man in "The Gentle Grafter," and published another sharp and clever collection of linked stories in 'Cabbbages and Kings,' about misfit and their misadventures in a fictional Central American 'banana republic' (O. Henry coined the term), Mr. Yagoda said in an interview.    

“Born in North Carolina, he spent his twenties and early thirties in Texas, and offered a careful and affectionate depiction of the just-before-the-turn-of the-century American West in such stories as `The Return of the Troubadour.’ A bit post-modernly, he wrote many self-conscious stories about writers and editors,” Mr. Yagoda said.” Perhaps his most characteristic theme was hidden identity and disguise, surely influenced by his own secretiveness about the fact that he was convicted of embezzling funds from the Texas bank where he worked as a teller, spent more than three years in prison, and took great pains to hide this for the rest of his life.”

 

Ben Yagoda said that O. Henry set more than one hundred stories in New York City, his adoptive hometown. “O. Henry’s New York stories present the city with journalistic precision and have a wide geographic, architectural, and social scope, taking place in Coney Island and the Tenderloin and Madison Square, and peopled by tycoons and shop girls, vaudevillian, and bums.”

 

Mr. Yagoda said that O. Henry had a fondness for wayward protagonists, such as outlaws and rogues. “O. Henry was born into a well-to-do family in North Carolina, but after he moved to Texas, he never hobnobbed with bigwigs, even after reaching a high level of literary fame in New York,” Mr. Yagoda said. “His prison experience was important in many ways, including that conversations with other inmates gave him so much material—for the famous safe-cracker short story `A Retrieved Reformation,” for the con-man stories in ‘The Gentle Grafter’ such as `Conscience in Art,” for a fascinating how-to piece called `Robbing a Train,’ for the overlooked gem `After Twenty Years.’”

 

Mr. Yagoda notes that in New York, he gravitated not so much to bigwigs as to those on the lower rungs of the social ladder, “… storekeepers, homeless people (like Soapy in `The Cop and the Anthe’), and, especially, the underpaid, harassed, and put-upon shop girls and young working women, some of whose stories he told in `The Last Leaf,’ `An Unfinished Story” and `The Trimmed Lamp.’”

 

“It’s fascinating that O. Henry arrived in New York in 1902, at the age of 40, having never set foot there previously, and almost immediately adopted it as his second home. Within a year he was setting most of his stories in the city, and in December 1903 was engaged by The Sunday World newspaper to write a short story every week, an arrangement that continued for a remarkable two years,” Mr. Yagoda said.

 

O. Henry died of alcohol-related illness in 1910, and, as Mr. Yagoda points out, O. Henry’s “The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball” is unflinchingly about an alcoholic.

O. Henry continues to be read today as he is entertaining and insightful, and “O.Henry: 101 Stories” offers a fine collection of his work.

 

• Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction, and thrillers. 

• • •

O. Henry: 101 Stories

O. Henry, Editor Ben Yagoda 

Library of America, $25.49, 840 pages, Published July 13, 2021

High-Ranking Member Of The Sinaloa Cartel Extradited From Mexico To The United States To Face International Drug Trafficking And Firearm Charges

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

A Mexican national made his initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia yesterday to face international drug trafficking and firearms charges.   

According to court documents, between August 2009 and January 2016, Jorge Ivan Gastelum Avila, aka Cholo Ivan, 42, was a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international drug trafficking organization that was headed by Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka El Chapo, and Ismael Zambada Garcia, aka El Mayo. The Sinaloa Cartel is a violent, transnational drug trafficking organization based in Mexico that engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and importation of ton quantities of cocaine and marijuana from Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, and Honduras to Mexico and into the United States.

Court documents also allege that at the time of his arrest, Gastelum Avila was a lead sicario, or assassin, for the Sinaloa Cartel and worked closely with Guzman Loera. He allegedly operated as the “plaza boss” for the Mexican city of Guamúchil, Sinaloa, and in that role, he supervised at least 200 armed men and controlled the drug-trafficking activities in that city and the surrounding area.

In January 2016, Mexican authorities arrested Gastelum Avila and Guzman Loera together in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico, as they attempted to flee arrest. In December 2018, a grand jury returned an indictment against Gastelum Avila. The United States requested his provisional arrest in February 2020 and Mexican authorities arrested Gastelum Avila based on that request in March 2020. Gastelum Avila remained detained in Mexico pending his extradition. He was extradited from Mexico to the United States on April 1. 

Gastelum Avila is charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and over 1,000 kilograms of marijuana intending and knowing that those substances would be imported into the United States. He is also charged with knowingly and intentionally using, carrying, brandishing, and discharging a firearm, including a destructive device, during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime. Gastelum Avila faces a maximum penalty of life in prison for the drug conspiracy charge and a mandatory consecutive sentence of 30 years for the firearms offense. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. 

Guzman Loera was extradited to the United States in January 2017. In July 2019, he was sentenced to life in prison for being a principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics trafficking, using a firearm in furtherance of his drug crimes, and participating in a money laundering conspiracy.

This case is supported by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Acting Executive Associate Director Steve K. Francis of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, and Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the FBI Washington Field Office made the announcement.

The HSI Nogales Office and the FBI Washington Field Office are investigating this case.

Trial Attorney Kirk Handrich of the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section is prosecuting the case. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs provided valuable assistance with securing the arrest and extradition of Gastelum Avila. The Criminal Division’s Office of Enforcement Operations also provided significant assistance.     

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

A Little Humor: Old Navy Joke

A U.S. Navy captain notices a light in the distance, on a collision course with his ship.

He turns on his signal lamp and sends, “Change your course, 10 degrees west.”

The light signals back, “Change yours, 10 degrees east.”

The captain gets a little annoyed. He signals, “I’m a US Navy captain. You must change your course.”

The light signals back, “I’m a civilian. You must change your course.”

Now the captain is mad. 

He signals, “I’m an aircraft carrier. I’m not changing my course.”

The light signals back a final message: “I’m a lighthouse. Your call.” 

A Look Back At The Late, Great Crime Writer Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett is one of my favorite crime writers. I've read nearly everything he has written and nearly everything written about him.

Back in 2018, I reviewed The Big Book of the Continental Op for the Washington Times. 

The Big Book of the Continental Op offers a collection of short stories about a nameless private detective who worked for the Continental Detective Agency. The stories were written by a former private detective who became a giant writer of crime fiction – Dashiell Hammett.

 

You can read the review via the below link or the below text:      

BOOK REVIEW: 'The Big Book of the Continental Op' by Dasheill Hammett - Washington Times

Some months ago I visited my daughter and her Air Force husband in California. We visited San Francisco and saw Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown and other well-known attractions. Although I had never been there before, I had a sense of familiarity. This was Dashiell Hammett’s town. I grew up reading Mr. Hammett’s crime stories and San Francisco appeared prominently in many of the stories. 

The late Dashiell Hammett, the author of "The Maltese Falcon," "The Thin Man," and other classic crime novels, began his writing career punching out short stories for Black Mask magazine.

Before he wrote about his more well-known detectives Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles, he created a nameless detective who narrated his early short stories. The detective, also called an operative, or Op, worked for the Continental Detective Agency. The Op was a short, fat fellow, unlike Mr. Hammett, who was tall, lean and in his youth looked like a “blonde Satan,” which is how he described Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon.”

 

In “The Big Book of the Continental Op,” fans of crime fiction can read a collection of all of Mr. Hammett’s Op stories. The book was edited by Richard Layman, the president of Bruccoli Clark Layman, producers of the “Dictionary of Literary Biography,” and Julie M. Rivett, Mr. Hammett’s granddaughter, who is a Dashiell Hammett scholar and spokesperson for the Hammett estate.

 

“The long-awaited volume you hold in your hands is the first and only collection to assemble every one of Dashiell Hammett’s pioneering Continental Op adventures — twenty-eight stand-alone stories, two novels, and Hammett’s only known unfinished Continental tale.” writes Ms. Rivett in her introduction. “It is truly definitive. And it has been many decades in the making.

 

“At the time of this writing, the first Op story is ninety-four years old and the last one is seventy-nine, not including ‘Three Dimes,’ an undated draft fragment conserved in Hammett’s archives, first published in 2016.

“The gritty sleuth Hammett described as ‘a little man going forward day after day through mud and blood and death and deceit’ has weathered gunshots, grifters, criminal conspiracies, class struggles, temptations, neglect, and more. This volume is testament to his tenacity. He is a survivor, a working-class hero, and a landmark literary creation.”

 

As Ms. Rivett notes, Dashiell Hammett was a Pinkerton detective and the Continental agency was modeled on Pinkerton. Mr. Hammett worked on cases involving forgeries, bank swindles and safe burglaries, which Ms. Rivett’s states was a solid factual basis for the Op’s fictional stories.

 

She goes on to quote her grandfather: “As much happens to one of my detectives in a page and a half as happened to me in six months when I was a real-life detective.”

 

The Continental Op first appeared in Black Mask magazine in October of 1923 in a story called “Arson Plus.”

 

“Jim Tarr picked up the cigar I rolled across his desk, looked at the band, bit off an end, and reached for a match,” Mr. Hammett’s “Arson Plus” begins. ‘Fifteen cents straight,’ he said. ‘You must want me to break a couple of laws for you this time.’

 

“I had been doing business with this fat sheriff of Sacramento County for four or five years — ever since I came to the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco office — and I had never known him to miss an opening for a sour crack; but it didn’t mean anything. ‘Wrong both times,’ I told him. ‘I get two of them for a quarter; and I’m here to do you a favor instead of asking for one. The company that insured Thornburgh’s house thinks somebody touched it off.’”

 

Despite Dashiell Hammett’s foolish sympathy for the American Communist Party and other character flaws, he was a patriot who served in the U.S. Army in both world wars. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

 

“Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish,” wrote Raymond Chandler, another late, great crime writer. “He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.”

 

The Op stories are full of gritty and gruesome characters, plenty of action, snappy dialogue with period slang and fine writing. In “The Big Book of the Continental Op,” new readers can discover a unique voice and Dashiell Hammett aficionados, like myself, can rejoice in rereading all of his Op stories in one fine volume.

 

• Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime, espionage and terrorism.

 

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Dashiell Hammett, From Street to Paper, via the below link:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Beat Column: From Street To Paper: A Look Back At Dashiell Hammett, Crime Writer & Detective 

FBI And Philadelphia Police Department Continue To Seek Fugitive Justin Smith; $25,000 Reward For Information Leading To Arrest

The FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force continues to assist the Philadelphia Police Department with the search for Justin Smith, and we’re asking for the public’s help finding him. Smith is wanted for the murder of his girlfriend Dianna Brice, who was pregnant at the time.

Brice, 21, disappeared two years ago today, on March 30, 2021; her body was found on April 5, 2021. Smith is alleged to have shot Brice in the head multiple times, causing her death and the death of her unborn child.

On April 9, 2021, Smith was charged with murder and related offenses in the 1st Judicial District in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and a state warrant was issued for his arrest.

Justin Smith is known to have connections to Greensboro, North Carolina, and New Castle, Delaware. After fleeing Philadelphia in 2021, he was seen in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami, Florida, and in Atlanta, Georgia.

The FBI is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to Smith’s location and arrest.

Anyone with information on Smith’s whereabouts is asked to contact the FBI at 215-418-4000 or tips.fbi.gov. Tipsters can remain anonymous.

A Little Night Music: Great Smooth Jazz Quartet Fourplay With Guest Side Men Play 'Westchester Lady' Live

Below is a link to the great smooth jazz quartet Fourplay performing Westchester Lady live with guest side men Kirk Whalum, Bony James and Rick Braun on horns.      

Fourplay - WESTCHESTER LADY (Live) - YouTube

Additional Federal Charges Brought In Superseding Indictment For Murder Of Philadelphia Police Sergeant James O’Connor

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia released the below information:

 PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that a Superseding Indictment was unsealed today in relation to the murder of Philadelphia Police Corporal James “Jimmy” O’Connor, posthumously promoted to Sergeant. The 31-count Superseding Indictment includes a RICO conspiracy, three additional counts of murder, nine non-fatal shootings, and related charges for Hassan Elliott, a/k/a “Haz,” age 25; Khalif Sears, a/k/a “Leaf,” a/k/a “Lil Leaf,” age 21; and two previously unnamed defendants, Kelvin Jiminez a/k/a “Nip,” age 32; and Dominique Parker, a/k/a “Dom,” age 31, all of Philadelphia.

The original Indictment charged the murder of Sergeant O’Connor, as well as related drug trafficking and firearms offenses.

The Superseding Indictment charges all four defendants with:

• conspiracy to participate in a racketeering (RICO) enterprise (1 count); and
• conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance (1 count).

Additional charges include:

• murder in aid of racketeering (4 counts);
• assault in aid of racketeering (9 counts);
• attempted assault in aid of racketeering (2 counts);
• possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking (1 count);
• using, carrying, brandishing, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence (5 counts);
• murder in the course of using, carrying, and discharging a firearm (4 counts);
• possession with intent to distribute and distribution of a controlled substance (1 count);
• maintaining a drug involved premises (1 count); and
• possession of a firearm by a felon (2 counts).

The Superseding Indictment alleges that the defendants were members of a violent drug trafficking organization known as “1700 Scattergood,” which operated in the Frankford section of Northeast Philadelphia. The defendants allegedly sold large quantities of narcotics over a multi-year period, using violence and threats of violence to protect their reputation and drug territory. The Superseding Indictment alleges that in furtherance of that conspiracy, Elliott and others killed Kaseem Rogers on December 3, 2018; Tyrone Tyree on March 1, 2019; and Dontae Walker on August 22, 2019.

On March 13, 2020, Elliott, Sears, and others previously indicted were inside a stash house on the 1600 block of Bridge Street when Sergeant O’Connor and other members of the Philadelphia Police Department’s SWAT team arrived with a homicide warrant for Elliott related to the March 2019 murder of Tyrone Tyree. As Sergeant O’Connor and his fellow officers ascended the staircase to the second floor of the residence and announced their presence multiple times, Elliott allegedly fired a semi-automatic assault rifle 16 times, striking and killing Sergeant O’Connor.

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum possible penalty of lifetime imprisonment. In addition, contained within the Superseding Indictment is a Notice of Special Findings for defendant Elliott for each of the four charges of murder while using or carrying a firearm. These Notices make Elliott eligible for the death penalty.

The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and the Philadelphia Police Department, and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Christopher Diviny, Ashley Martin, and Lauren Stram.

An indictment, information, or criminal complaint is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Updated March 31, 2023