Dashiell Hammett: The Library of America Edition: Hammett

by Dashiell Hammett

Here, for the first time in a deluxe collector’s box, is the most comprehensive edition of the hard-boiled crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett ever published. Complete Novels, the first of two volumes gathered here, presents the five groundbreaking books whose gritty, lean prose won admiration from such contemporaries as Stein, Hemingway, and Faulkner: Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key,, and The Thin Man.

In the stories he wrote for Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, Hammett used the vernacular adventure tale to register the jarring textures and revved-up cadences of modern America. Crime Stories & Other Writings presents 24 of these classic tales, along with revealing essays and an early, unfinished 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 revisions introduced by later editors.

“An invaluable collection.” —Kirkus Reviews

Genres: Fiction, Mystery

1901 pages, Hardcover

First published May 2, 2013

About the author

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...

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

First up is Red Harvest, in which Continental Op comes into a dirty town and returns control to its original dirty owner. Lots of people end up dying, and Continental Op has blood on his hands.
April 10, 2018
The Dain Curse has Continental Op solving a case, then coming back to the players to finally solve the case.
June 13, 2018