Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him? THE AUTHOR B.1894, d.1961. After spells as newsboy, freight clerk, labourer, messenger, stevedore and advertising manager, Hammett became an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His experiences as a private detective laid the foundation for his writing career.

With his diamond-sharp prose and artfully handled intrigue, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented hard-boiled crime fiction. This omnibus edition includes four linked stories - 'The House in Turk Street', 'The Girl with the Silver Eyes', 'The Big Knockover' and '$106,000 Blood Money - featuring the Continental Op, Hammett's anonymous tough-guy detective. In The Dain Curse, the Op takes on a wealthy young woman who appears to be the victim of a deadly family curse. And in The Glass Key - Hammett's own favourite among his works - we encounter his most cynical, morally ambiguous hero and a hard-boiled version of a love triangle. In the works collected here, we can observe the process by which Hammett both stripped crime fiction down to its most subtle and searing essentials and elevated it to high literature.

When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.

The last novel from the unsurpassed master of American detective fiction, Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man is a genre-defining mystery novel, published in Penguin Modern Classics. Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good Scotch. But then a bullet-riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention the attentions of a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement and back into business. Trying to make sense of false leads, suspicious alibis and mistaken identities, Nick and Nora are thrown into a world of gangsters, hoodlums and speakeasies, where no-one can be trusted. Dashiell Hammett was credited with inventing the hardboiled crime novel, and this story of murder and mayhem in Manhattan, with its breakneck plot, snappy dialogue - and the hard-drinking, wisecracking couple Nick and Nora - is one of his most thrillingly enjoyable mysteries. Dashiel Samuel Hammett (1894-1961) was born on a farm in southern Maryland, and grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He left school at the age of fourteen, and after various jobs became an operative for Pinkerton's Detective Agency. The First World War intervened, and Hammett soon turned to writing, becoming, during the 1920s, the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Thin Man (1932) and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most famous novels. If you enjoyed The Thin Man, you might like Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Other Novels, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'The ace performer' Raymond Chandler, author of The Big Sleep 'The exuberance of language, the relish with which seediness is described ... it's a pleasure to imagine Hammett cutting loose with whatever rascally high jinks he could cook up' Margaret Atwood, author of The Blind Assassin

'An acknowledged literary landmark' [Robert Graves] from 'The dean of the school of hard-boiled fiction' [New York Times] The Continental Op first heard Personville called Poisonville by Hickey Dewey. But since Dewey also called a shirt a shoit, he didn't think anything of it. Until he went there and his client, the only honest man in Poisonville, was murdered. Then the Op decided to stay to punish the guilty. And that meant taking on the entire town...

'Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best' THE TIMES Dashiell Hammett is the true inventor of modern detective fiction and the creator of the private eye, the isolated hero in a world where treachery is the norm. The Continental Op was his great first contribution to the genre and these seven stories, which first appeared in the magazine Black Mask, are the best examples of Hammett's early writing, in which his formidable literary and moral imagination is already operating at full strength. The Continental Op is the dispassionate fat man working for the Continental Detective Agency, modelled on the Pinkerton Agency, whose only interest is in doing his job in a world of violence, passion, desperate action and great excitement.

'Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best' THE TIMES Miss Gabriel Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die - violently. Is she the victim of a family curse? The short, squat, utterly unsentimental Continental Op, the best private detective around, has his doubts and finds himself confronting something infinitely more dangerous. This is the Continental Op's most bizarre case and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.

Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.

A collection of some of the finest stories from Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon.

In Honor And Memory Of The Men Of The North Pacific Theater Who Died So That A Continent Might Be Free.

In Honor And Memory Of The Men Of The North Pacific Theater Who Died So That A Continent Might Be Free.

Paperback Quarterly, journal of mass-market paperback history, Volume 4 Number 3, Fall 1981, contains: "Norman Daniels -- the Writer as Assembly Line," by Michael S. Barson, "An Interview with Norman Daniels," by Michael S. Barson, "Dashiell Hammett in the Dell Mapbacks," by William Lyles, "SF Writers in Other Fields," by Bill Crider, "Eugene Manlove Rhodes," by M. C. Hill, "Covers that Never Were," "The Pocket Books/DeGraff Formula," by Charley Culpepper and "Paperback Postcards," by Thomas Bonn.

Dashiell Hammett is the undisputed master of hardboiled detective fiction, and one of the greatest mystery writers of all time. Originally published in the October 1923 issue of Black Mask, 'Arson Plus' was one of his earliest published tales, and a defining early example of the genre he would go on to make his own. Many of the hardboiled and pulp detective stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

A treasure worth killing for.  Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics.  A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime.  These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

As an operative for Pinkerton's Detective Agency Dashiell Hammett knew about sleuthing from the inside, but his career was cut short by the ruin of his health in World War I. These three celebrated novels are therefore the products of a hard real life, not a literary education. Despite - or because of - that, Hammett had an enormous effect on mainstream writers between the wars. Like his readers, they were attracted by the combination of laconic style, sharp convincing dialogue, vivid settings and, above all, the low-life, hard-boiled characters who populate the streets of his stories. Taking detective fiction out of the drawing-room, Hammett 'gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it', as Raymond Chandler said. In so doing, he left his mark on modern fiction.

A literary event: The first-ever selection from the letters of Dashiell Hammett, the genius of American crime fiction . "This book is a thing of beauty, from concept to execution, taking us all the way down to the life-marrow of hardboiled's one true icon. Under Richard 'Shadow Man' Layman's masterful guidance, we find what Hammett sought (and fought for) his entire life...Truth."Andrew VachssMore than any book before it, this one gives us the complete Hammett, in his own words. Here is Hammett the family man, distant but devoted, sometimes late with the check but never too late; Hammett the student of politics, scanning the headlines from a Marxist perspective; Hammett the lover of Lillian Hellman, delighting in her style, humor, accomplishments but maintaining his independence. Celebrity, soldier, activist, survivor--Hammett was each in turn, but he was always, above all else, a writer. The artist is present in every line, and this book adds to his stature as a classic American writer."That these letters read exceptionally well is no surprise...[Hammett] comes across here as authentically, contradictorily human." Book magazine"An illuminating collection of the famed writer's letters...A fine rendering of Hammett's life in his own words--and a remarkable slice of Americana."Kirkus Reviews"A dry fatalism in the letters sent me back to the novels and their absence of mercy. No book on Hammett has made that tone clear in terms of his life. But these letters show the old-fashioned literary gent (vaguely tickled by praise from Gide and Malraux) who still kept a thug in tow, a kind of inner Ned Beaumont, to make sure that pride or pleasure never got out of hand." David Thomson, New York Times Book Review "The key revelations are personal: self-portraits of the author as doting father, unremitting drunk, self-educated intellectual, committed Marxist, patriot, soft touch, seducer, and romantic...Compelling and informative."Dick Lochte, Los Angeles Times Book Review"They do not disappoint. They sound gloriously like Hammett, full of wry observation, whether he is describing his evening at the Brown Derby or finally reading Wuthering Heights." Lisa Levy, Entertainment Weekly (A-)

'Dashiell Hammett is an original. He is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer' BOSTON GLOBE Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op was the prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. Short, squat and as stubborn as a mule, the Op's only enthusiasm was doing his job. In the stories in THE BIG KNOCKOVER, the job means solving the bank heist to end all bank heists, taking on a gang of freebooters, cleaning up a vice-ridden hell in the desert and dealing with assorted colourful grifters like the Dis-and-Dat Kid, Alphabet Shorty McCoy and Bluepoint Vance.

Corruption, murder, beauty and innocence . . . 'Great crime fiction started with Hammett' James Ellroy 'Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best' THE TIMES Ned Beaumont is a tall, thin, moustache-wearing, TB-ridden, drinking, gambling, hanger-on to the political boss of a corrupt Eastern city. Nevertheless, like every Hammett hero (and like Hammett himself), he has an unbreakable, if idiosyncratic, moral code. Ned's boss wants to better himself with a thoroughbred senator's daughter; but does he want it badly enough to commit murder? If he's innocent, who wants him in the frame? Beaumont must find out.