The website of the greatest pulp fiction writer who ever lived
Hack wrote this novel after María Corina Machado gave Donald Trump the medallion and certificate she received for being named the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner in a transparent attempt to make her his puppet president of Venezuela. And while Hack clearly doesn’t comprehend the insignificance of someone winning a trophy and then giving it to another person who didn’t, it’s even more fucking obvious that Trump doesn’t either.
You could have heard a pin drop when Madame Cherepakha took the stand. Jonny and Boris had seen her testify at many trials and she always had a strong impact on juries. Her showmanship was in top form as she took the crystal ball she had purchased at the Hollywood Magic Store, said a few “magic words” in her Native Russian that sounded to Jonny and Boris like pig latin, and a cloudy image in the glass of a figure wearing a trench coat fired a gun. “Ve do not hef such creetures in my country,” she said in a thick Bela Lugosi accent, “but here you call it a…”
“A pug?” asked Big Tim’s attorney Atticus Finch. The psychic shook her head as a gasp came up through the spectators’ gallery and every member of the jury glared at Boris as if they were seeing him for the first time…and they were disgusted by what they saw. The twelve hicks from Van Nuys took one look at a conjuror’s trick from a novelty store and were ready to throw evidence from six months of detective work in the dumpster so that they could execute one of the great heroes of the city. Boris sat stiffly, his jowls slack, his eyes wide and wounded—not with fear, but with the kind of disbelief that comes when the world you saved starts sharpening the axe. Cherepakha’s magic show was finished, and Jonny and Boris would have to pull their own rabbit out of a hat…and now.
Hack wrote this to commemorate the passing of Humphrey Bogart, who died 69 years ago today. In truth, the constraints of the Production Code in force at the time wouldn’t allow them to use the scene in The Maltese Falcon where the femme fatale has to take off all her clothes to prove she didn’t steal a $1000 bill in the 1941 Bogart film. But it is in the novel and the 1931 pre-code version so Hack plugged it into this book because we’ve had a stressful morning. He even made Natalie Wood the character to cheer us up that much more. Hack can be a nice guy when he wants to.
By the time the trio finally made it to the front of the line at the soup place, Jonny felt like he’d made some headway with Elaine. But Boris’ perpetually ravenous belly was focused on only one thing: lunch. The middle eastern proprietor starred down the pug with an intimidating glare that would have overwhelmed anyone else, but Boris’ only master was his stomach. “We’ll have three large mulligatawnies and make it snappy!” The man was unmoved. “Who brought this animal in here? Dogs are not allowed on the premises. Whoever it belongs to, take your mangy creature and get out! No soup for…”
Before he could finish his catchphrase, Boris leapt over the sneeze guard and delivered a kung fu kick to the insolent server’s jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor. While he laid there in a daze, Boris put him in the dreaded Ninja Death Grip so that if the pug increased the pressure of his paw even a fraction of an inch, the soupmaker would be meeting his maker that day. “I said we’ll have three large mulligatawnies, and it will be your pleasure to give them to us on the house.”
Jonny threw his arms around Elaine protectively because he’d witnessed this scene enough to know that if the Soup Nazi was foolish enough to resist, there would be blood spouting at least six feet in all directions. The sultry beauty returned the grasp with the firmness of a woman whose blood was about to boil over with passion. She looked at Jonny with a red-hot intensity, and he replied with the smug grin of a man who knew that he was about to spend the afternoon between tangled sheets.
Happy birthday to Julia Louis-Dreyfus!
Happy National Clean Off Your Desk Day!
Good luck to everyone tonight at the Golden Globes!!!
The Jonny Pals sat hunched around the roundtable at the Van Nuys Denny’s like defendants waiting on a verdict, steam from bad coffee curling up into their famous faces. They were all icons in their own right; the celebrated detectives Jonny & Boris, the legendary junior ranger Bro Joe, the storied political agitator Lisa Glass; even Jonny’s girlfriend Linda had a singing career that won her a small following. But they were about to confront REAL celebrity. Midnight came in on the cheap neon buzz of the door, and with it staggered Hack Werker—whiskey-heavy, eyes bright as switchblades—one hand on the counter, the other gripping a pen that had ruined better men than bullets ever did.
Introductions were exchanged with the care you’d use passing a live grenade. Werker slid into the booth and fished a steno pad from his jacket, the paper already hungry. He said he’d followed their exploits for years, that he admired the cut of their sins, but his pencil hovered like a vulture waiting for someone to stop breathing. Penny Pal clutched her tiny, bejeweled clutch purse as if it might shield her. “You won’t put any of this in a book, will you?” she asked. Werker’s grin answered first—thin, knowing—before his voice did, and everyone at the table felt their secrets shift uncomfortably in their pockets.
He waved the waitress over and ordered drinks like a man setting a trap with velvet gloves. “I only write what people give me,” he said, casual as a confession, “and I never improve on the truth.” Glasses arrived, ice clinked like nervous teeth, and the menus suddenly read like alibis that wouldn’t hold up in court. They all knew then that the night wouldn’t end with pancakes—it would end with pages, and once something hit the page, it stayed dead forever. The Jonny Pals lifted their glasses anyway, because in this town refusing a drink was just another way of telling on yourself.
Boris shook the salt from his jowls and watched the last bubbles of the S.S. Jonny Pals wink out like bad ideas at dawn, the sea around them littered with the bloated punctuation marks of a voyage gone wrong. Survival, he knew, was about priorities, and priorities were about people. He cleared his throat and laid it out like a crooked hand of cards. Pussy was a given—some things in this world were as fixed as gravity. The movie star with the Frankenstein jawline didn’t blink before calling dibs on the brilliant professor, citing destiny, chemistry, and the simple math of ego. Everyone nodded, because in a crisis people believe whoever sounds most confident, even if he’s wrong.
That left the odd scraps, and that’s when Linda cut in, braids swinging, red gingham bright enough to insult the sun. She chose her boyfriend Jonny…’s pal Eddie with the cool efficiency of someone picking the only lifeboat that hadn’t sprung a leak, and she didn’t bother sugarcoating the reasons. “No offense, Jonny, but you’re pretty damaged and I don’t think you’ll survive more than two weeks in the wild. Plus, you cheat on me in every other Hack Werker novel with whatever hot celebrity has a birthday that day, so it’s not like I owe you anything. “ Jonny felt the verdict land like a sap to the kidneys. Boris made it official with a wag of his paw and a tone that brooked no appeal: couplings set, pecking order established. Jonny, freshly demoted to island mule, got the worst of it—dragging the dead from the shallows while the living sorted their futures. The sea smelled like rust and regret, and as Jonny worked, he couldn’t shake the feeling that being unfuckable was the least of his problems.
Happy heavenly birthday to Bob Denver!
As Jonny lay helpless in the webbing of his sex swing, staring down the blue-black eye of the pistol she’d just slid from her garter, the room smelled of cheap perfume and bad decisions. It hit him then—this wasn’t just another luscious dame chasing a bedtime story about a roll in the hay with a famous detective. Her voice trembled, but the muzzle didn’t. “Your incompetence killed my Daddy,” she said, tears bright as broken glass in those beautiful eyes. “You let him face the hangman’s noose for a crime he didn’t commit.” Revenge had a pulse, and it was thudding in his ears. She was about to pull the trigger when fate padded down the stairs on four short legs—Boris, on his third midnight snack—who let loose a flying judo kick that sent the gun clattering like loose change across the floor.
They both remembered the case like yesterday, back when they were flatfoots pounding a beat and believing the badge meant something. They’d had the goods on the real killer—a big shot tucked into the Van Nuys comptroller’s office—but the department took care of its own in those days. Evidence went missing, reports got rewritten, and the noose tightened around James Cleveland: decent man, community pillar, father to a baby girl who’d grown up feeding on the cold diet of injustice. One look at her anguished face told Jonny and Boris the truth they couldn’t dodge anymore. The past had come calling with a loaded gun, and it was time to reopen the case—this time with the lights on and no favors owed.