Crime Stories and Other Writings

dashiell hammett

In scores of stories written for Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, Dashiell Hammett used the vernacular adventure tale to register the jarring textures and revved-up cadences of modern America. His stories opened up crime fiction to the realities of American streets and American speech. Now The Library of America collects the finest of them: 24 in all, along with some revealing essays and an early version of his novel The Thin Man. The texts, reprinted here for the first time, are those that appeared originally in the pulps, without the cuts and revisions introduced by later editors.Hammett's years of experience as a Pinkerton detective give even his most outlandishly plotted mysteries a gritty credibility. Mixing melodramatic panache and poker-faced comedy, his stories are hard-edged entertainment for an era of headlong change and extravagant violence, tracking the devious, nearly nihilistic exploits of con men and blackmailers, slumming socialites and deadpan assassins. As guide through this underworld he created the Continental Op, the nameless and deliberately unheroic detective separated from the brutality and corruption around him only by his professionalism.

Genres short storiesfictionmysterycrimenoiramericanhard boiledclassicsthrillerliterary fiction

934 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10,2001

Series

The Continental Op

Places

san francisco california,

This edition

Format: 934 pages, Hardcover
Published: September 10, 2001 by Library of America
ISBN: 9781931082006
ASIN: 1931082006
Language: English

Characters More characters

The Continental Op

The Op is an operative, a detective, who works for the Continental Detective Agency. He appears in numerous short stories and two novels, but is never named. Short, rotund, late 30s or so when we first meet him. We know little of his personal life, except...
Barton (slippery Fingers)

He is the senior Mr. Grovers butler.more...
Henry Grover

He is the father of Frederick. Wealthy. Nickname is "Henny."more...
Ned Root

An accountant, he is a "human adding machine," according to The Op.more...
Marty Ohara

Police officer involved in the Grover investigation. He is also involved in the Montgomery Hotel investigation....
George Dean

Police detective on the Grover investigation. He is also involved in the Montgomery Hotel investigation. He gets involved in the Teal killing....

About the author

dashiell hammett

Also wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett

Dashiell Hammett, an American, wrote highly acclaimed detective fiction, including The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934).

Samuel Dashiell Hammett authored hardboiled novels and short stories. He created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) among the enduring characters. In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in the New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell...