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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.
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Red Harvest (Paperback)
Dashiell Hammett
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'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.
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
'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.
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