Complete Novels: Red Harvest / The Dain Curse / The Maltese Falcon / The Glass Key / The Thin Man

by Dashiell Hammett

Complete in one volume, the five books that created the modern American crime novel

In a few years of extraordinary creative energy, Dashiell Hammett invented the modern American crime novel.

The five novels that Hammett published between 1929 and 1934, collected here in one volume, have become part of modern American culture, creating archetypal characters and establishing the ground rules and characteristic tone for a whole tradition of hardboiled writing. Drawing on his own experiences as a Pinkerton detective, Hammett gave a harshly realistic edge to novels that were at the same time infused with a spirit of romantic adventure.

Each novel is distinct in mood and structure. Red Harvest (1929) epitomizes the violence and momentum of his Black Mask stories about the anonymous detective the Continental Op, in a raucous and nightmarish evocation of political corruption and gang warfare in a western mining town. In The Dain Curse (1929) the Op returns in a more melodramatic tale involving jewel theft, drugs, and a religious cult. With The Maltese Falcon (1930) and its protagonist Sam Spade, Hammett achieved his most enduring popular success, a tightly constructed quest story shot through with a sense of disillusionment and the arbitrariness of personal destiny. The Glass Key (1931) is a further exploration of city politics at their most scurrilous. His last novel was The Thin Man (1934), a ruefully comic tale paying homage to the traditional mystery form and featuring Nick and Nora Charles, the sophisticated inebriates who would enjoy a long afterlife in the movies.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Noir, Crime, Classics, Literature, Thriller

969 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1942

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

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATE:
I spent most of 2018 and 2019 reading Mid-20th Century North American Crime novels (about 275). I've gone back to my favorites for a 2nd, and sometimes a 3rd, reading. Why? Because after reading all 7 of Chandler's novels and The Annotated Big Sleep, most of Ross Macdonald's novels, dozens of "Hard Case" publications, much of Patricia Highsmith, Cornell Woolrich, etc., there are 2 Hammett novels that have just floored me during the third read. So here, Weakest to Best, is my new ranking:
5-The Thin Man - This one doesn't even belong in a Hammett anthology, imo.
4-The Glass Key - It's as convoluted as "Dain Curse" but pales in comparison.
3-Maltese Falcon - Yes, the movie is great. Better than the book I'd say, so don't let the movie impact your thoughts of the book.
2-The Dain Curse - An epic follow-up to Red Harvest, "Dain" has it all and after the third read, I realize how perfect it is constructed. Chandler goes for epic in "Long Goodbye" and even though that book is good, it doesn't have the originality of "Dain". So many authors subsequently lifted elements from "Dain", such as cult worship, drug use, and a liberal dose of sex.
1 - Red Harvest - A one-sit read for my third reading. Blisteringly fast, "Red Harvest" never lets up, not for a page, a paragraph, a sentence. A perfect novel, definitely a candidate for The Great American Novel: a poisoned world through which a never-named/identified detective tells us what he sees. And since we know nothing about the detective: it's so easy to slip into his role, his perspective. But "Dain Curse" is such a close second.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I've read the five novels here and when I finished the last one, "The Thin Man", I had put them in this order: (least favorite to favorite)
5-Thin Man - (read in 2018), 4-Dain Curse - (read many years ago), 3-Glass Key - (read in 2018), 2-Red Harvest - (read many years ago), and #1/favorite-Maltese Falcon (read many years ago.)
BUT, I've since re-read Red Harvest and Dain Curse and both were surprises, in a good way. So, I'm re-reading Maltese Falcon and have definitely changed my ratings:
5-Thin Man - (easily the weakest), 4-Glass Key (the most convoluted for reasons I don't get) and my favorite three in order? Tough question as Red Harvest, Dain Curse, and Maltese Falcon are all 3 classics of the genre. I think the excellent film version of Maltese Falcon may be influencing my rating of these books. But right now, I'd say if you love this genre, Maltese Falcon has it all. But again, I'm re-reading it now. And the only reason I can't give this entire collection 5 stars is because of the massively flawed "Thin Man", but Hammett's health was on the decline by the time he wrote that one.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Library of America Volume N° 110 contains the following five Hammett novels:



1. Red Harvest (January 2011)

2. The Dain Curse (May 11, 2012)

3. The Maltese Falcon (March 2011)

4. The Glass Key (May 15, 2012)

5. The Thin Man (March 21, 2011)

I read all five of these novels between January 2011 and May 2012. They were fantastic, but I wasn't super engaged in review writing. I've hyper-linked to my individual reviews for your viewing pleasure. I might need to go back and review Red Harvest and flesh-out, re-read all five of these novels again. I've been contemplating devoting one whole year to only doing re-reads. Perhaps 2019

[Googz · Rating 5 out of 5]

RED HARVEST - started 03/01/2010, finished 03/12/2010. Amazing! This is sort of the granddaddy of the hard-boiled detective stories, as I understand it. These stories, while well-rooted in the mystery/detective fiction genre, actually seem to owe more debt to medieval tales of morality and heroism, as well as gritty western dramatic literature. A lone hero blows into a dusty town that is not what it appears, interacts with all manner of seedy and interesting characters, and acts out of questionable motives to attain goals both selfish and shared. I loved it...I know it is one of the most popular/oldest novels without an official film version, but when YOJIMBO is based on you, and A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS is based on YOJIMBO, do you really need an official filmed version? (No) Anyway, hoping to get back to Hammett soon, maybe pepper some Sherlock or other stuff in between here.

THE DAIN CURSE - started 01/28/2012, finished 02/01/2012. It's not THAT much longer than Hammett's other four novels, but somehow, having now read them all, it SEEMED so much longer! Not in a bad way, though. I think Hammett is a great writer. I wish he'd written more novels. All I've got now are the short stories, which I will get into eventually. I'm also curious to see the TV movie version of this with James Coburn. I love the complicated, convoluted nature of it all. This thing took me like four days to read, but in retrospect it seems like it could've taken a month. Rich (if somewhat...scientific?) descriptions and betrayals upon betrayals add to the extreme likability and memorability of this and all of Hammett's work.

THE MALTESE FALCON - started 12/25/2012, finished 12/27/2012. I think I had read this one once before, long ago. It is really good! I've said it before and will say it some more: Hammett shoulda written more, especially when he was so good at creating unstoppably fascinating characters. Like Sam Spade! I haven't seen the movie of this one in awhile - I'll have to check'r out sometime soon.

THE GLASS KEY - started 01/02/2013, finished 01/03/2013. At some point I guess I really got into the Hammett groove. RED HARVEST took me a week and a half, DAIN took me five days, FALCON two, and these last two, about a day apiece. I was just gobbling it up by the end. I like that THE GLASS KEY, unlike his other novels, has as its protagonist someone who isn't even necessarily any kind of detective, but it's still a detective story at its core. Allegedly this was Hammett's favorite of his own novels, but I also hear he wanted to burn every copy of all of 'em toward the end of his life.

THE THIN MAN - started 01/04/2013, finished 01/05/2013. And once I'd completed THE GLASS KEY, I thought, what the hey, I'll just read this last one, too. Why not? I have been a HUGE fan of the movie(s) ever since I seen't 'em. The witty banter, the constant partying, the cavorting with criminals, all against the glitz and glam of...the great depression. I love it. A few choice phrases from the movie are straight outta the book, and of course each (the book and the movie) have a lot of great material that's missing from the other. A lovely read start-to-finish, even if I knew whodunit (and/or what-he-dun) the whole time.

[Avery Hutchins · Rating 5 out of 5]

All of the books in this collection are wonderful, and it is a great volume. But the best one, by far, is The Maltese Falcon. How can a book with such an ambiguous ending and such despicable characters become one of the my absolute favorites? This book is great because it is non-linear, muddled and timeless. It is noir that takes place in the Depression era of LA, but it still holds its own and fits snuggly with such great modern books as Saroff's Paper Targets: Art Can Be Murder and Woodrill's Winter's Bone. And San Franciso in the 20's must have been a wild, lawless place. And that confusion seeps into Hammett's expert plotting. No one really understands what is happening, and the crazy characters who have been searching for a mysterious and nearly mythical golden and jeweled statue are not searching for an object as much as they are searching for a place to park their endless angst. All of Hammet's books are worth reading and re-reading, but this one soars above the others.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hammett is credited with inventing the modern crime novel, noted for its gritty realism, punchy and sardonic dialogue, and frankly depicted violence. Hammett wrote all five of these seminal novels in a very brief period, beginning in 1927 and completing The Thin Man in 1933. He lived another 27 or so years and didn’t publish another novel or much else beyond some journalism and movie treatments. Illness, alcoholism, politics, and, one suspects, success are to blame. Red Harvest is the story of the violent purging of civic corruption of a small California mining town. The premise is the town’s father, a mine owner who brought nefarious forces to bear on the Wobblies and won a victory against unionization but lost control of his town to the gangsters, gamblers, thugs, and the police force he corrupted to earn his pyrrhic victory. The murder of the burg’s crusading newspaper editor brings in the Continental Op, the novel’s protagonist (and the protagonist of The Dain Curse) but is never named. Like a jujitsu master, the Op manipulates the malign forces in directions they are prone to (greed and power) and organized mayhem results. The Dain Curse starts less complexly but eventually rivals its predecessor in terms of the number of cords of dead people stacked by novel’s finish. It begins with a jewel robbery involving a peculiar family and in the first of three resolutions for the novel, the evil step-mother in this family is dead, as is her husband, and a burglar/blackmailer. The second resolution comes as we follow the daughter into a California cult (yes, even in 1929 the state was gullible to faux religions and hocus-pocus shamans). The third and final resolution comes only after her husband and another couple of thugs are done away with and some accomplices jailed and one character is blown nearly to bits. The Maltese Falcon is the volume’s and perhaps the genre’s 20th century masterpiece, enhanced by the third of its film adaptations with Bogart, Greenstreet, Lorre, and Astor. It has a small bodycount but lots of twists and turns. And it’s got great dialogue that you can hear as well as read—Bogart’s Spade, Lorre’s Cairo, and Greenstreet’s Fat Man. It’s a great tale of greed, romance, and betrayal and its message of integrity at Spade’s refusal to play the sap for no one resonates. It also has the best female character in Hammett, Brigid O’Shaughnessy. A familiar story and still a compelling read. The Glass Key has the lowest body count of any of the Hammett novels to date. One murder early and one late. In between there are numerous beatings, a shooting, a failed suicide attempt and another threatened one but that’s about it. It’s a thriller with elections politics and corrupt city agencies and no good guys, just a good bad guy, Ned Beaumont. Beaumont is a memorable tough guy; one with it seems a masochistic streak as he repeatedly takes massive beatings only to rise again as soon as conscious to entertain more of the same. Shad O’Rory, Paul’s rival, is also a character who sticks with you, and Jeff his slow-witted, sadistic thug. And then there are the dames—the newspaperman’s wife, the bookie’s girlfriend, the senator’s daughter, Paul’s mom, and his daughter—tough, seductive, charming, abrasive, bored but never boring. Not sure why this one hasn’t been successfully made into a movie. The Thin Man was the least enjoyable of the five. Unlike The Maltese Falcon you couldn’t hear the voices of Nick and Nora, at least not William Powell’s and Myrna Loy’s voices. I believe this was an instance of a movie improving on a book. Novel Nick is not as charming or as comic as Movie Nick. He is just a tough guy drunk. Nora is more charming but less a foil and more a muse for Nick. Still Hammett’s a great reading experience.

[Jon Recluse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Harvest: 5 stars
The Dain Curse: 4.5 stars
The Maltese Falcon: 5 stars
The Glass Key: 4.5 stars
The Thin Man: 5 stars

Highly recommended

[Sarah Monette]

I'm gonna be honest right up front and say that my favorite of these novels is The Thin Man. I read the others with interest, but I'm unlikely to read them again. The Thin Man may get added to my stack of comfort reading. (I think it's not a coincidence that nobody made more Sam Spade movies, but Nick and Nora had a very long life in Hollywood, even if in warped form.)

So. Dashiell Hammett, generally considered the founder of the hard-boiled mystery genre. Having read his novels, my feeling is that all hard-boiled mysteries should be set during Prohibition, because there's a way in which the use of alcohol conveys the setting perfectly. Alcohol is illegal, but you can find it everywhere; the police are just as bad as anyone else. And that expresses the layer of corruption, like smog, that permeates--and saturates--every godforsaken inch of the territory Hammett covers.

Hammett also prefers a particularly opaque style of narration, whether he's writing in third person or first, in that you never see any character's thoughts, including the protagonists. I think it is a sign of what an excellent writer he was that this does not make his characters surface-y. They all clearly have interiority--everybody has their own agenda--we just can't see it. In third person, this tends to make everyone look like a sociopath (and honestly, it may just be that everyone in The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key IS a sociopath except Effie Perrine), and it makes it difficult bordering on impossible to invest in the main character. Although I did not like Sam Spade at all, I ended up feeling compassion for him, but Ned Beaumont, the protagonist of The Glass Key (and Hammett always uses his name that way, "Ned Beaumont," throughout the entire damn novel, possibly to really whack the hammer down on the ALIENATION key), was just kind of loathsome. I am fully prepared to argue that that was Hammett's intent, and that he did a bang-up job of it, but I'm certainly never going to put myself through reading that novel again just to watch loathsome people doing loathsome things in an endlessly repetitive chain of betrayals. It's rather Huis Close (No Exit) in that at the end Ned Beaumont and Janet Henry are stuck with each other, but the thing that makes Huis Close dramatically as well as philosophically interesting is the slow teasing out of secrets, the presentation of the mask each character wears and then the long slow reveal of what is staring out from behind it. Ned Beaumont remains opaque and dull, both in the sense of boring and in the sense of failing to reflect light.

(Full disclosure: I may also have disliked The Glass Key because it's a novel about corruption and politics with a murder in it rather than a mystery set against a backdrop of politics and corruption. I'm a hardcore genre reader, and I hate novels about politics.)

(Yes, I know. Shut up.)

The Continental Op is a little different. He's an effective narrator; I dislike him, but I invested in him--more in The Dain Curse than in Red Harvest (Red Harvest is another novel about politics and corruption; it just has a lot more murders in it.) I also have him cast irreversibly in my head as Danny DeVito circa Romancing the Stone, but that's something I did to myself. The mysteries are awkward and sprawling (and really, you should never end up with the narrator explaining the murders to the murderer) and The Dain Curse is wildly, goofily improbable. I don't like the Continental Op, but he's real enough and complex enough that I'm willing to spend time with him. I might reread The Dain Curse. Not so much Red Harvest.

What I particularly like about The Thin Man is that, if you'll pardon the cart-before-the-horse anachronism, it's like The Big Sleep meets The Great Gatsby. Nick is clearly a functioning alcoholic, and clearly was very much like the Continental Op when he was a P.I. The characters surrounding him are straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald: aimless and narcissistic and hungry to drag other people down with them. But Nick's also a forty-year-old retired detective in love with his extremely wealthy twenty-six-year-old wife, and he's someone who's trying to do the right thing--or, maybe, someone trying to find the right thing so that he can take a run at it. I like Nick Charles in a way I don't like any of Hammett's other protagonists. And I know that's because Hammett was trying hard to make me not like them, but still.

Also? Asta. Full stop.

(Asta, aside from being female, is a Schnauzer. She's probably a standard Schnauzer (w/handler for scale), but I have somewhat wistfully cast cast as a giant Schnauzer (w/kid for scale) (and here again w/Great Dane for scale), to give some real emphasis to Nick's repeated line, "Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet." The wire haired fox terrier (w/kid for scale) who played Asta in the movies is cute as a button, but he isn't Asta.)

The Thin Man is probably not what a purist would call hard-boiled. It stays too much on the top side of society. It is neither "gritty" nor "raw." But it is definitely my favorite of Dashiell Hammett's novels, possibly because the characteristic it shares with Raymond Chandler's novels is that the protagonist is trying to do the right thing, even when he doesn't know what that is.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The outcome of successful planning always looks like luck to saps.”

This collects all five of Dashiell Hammett’s novels. The first two feature an unnamed operative of the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency. The third is Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, the fourth is a gangster/detective solving a mystery sort of for his boss, the crime lord who runs the town, and the fifth is Nick and Nora in The Thin Man.

It is possible that I have read some Hammett short stories before, but I have never read any of these novels until now. I haven’t even seen the Humphrey Bogart Maltese Falcon. Which makes it amazing just how easy it is to see Humphrey Bogart playing these characters. By a couple of pages into Red Harvest, the first of his Continental Detective operative stories, I found it impossible not to read the first-person narrative in Bogart’s voice. The effect continued to a lesser extent through the rest of the novels. (Only the Continental stories and The Thin Man are written in first-person, however.)

After his Bogart-ness, what struck me most about Hammett’s unnamed “Continental operative” is that he’s a hacker. When he doesn’t understand a system, he pokes at it, observes the response, and learns the underlying issue by repeated pokes. He very much treats his mysteries as black boxes: he can affect some of the inputs, and see some of the outputs, and that’s how he solves them.

California has apparently been known for weird cults long before Dianetics; the second novel involves a bad writer starting a weird cult in San Francisco. All of these stories take place, as far as I can tell by the references to speakeasies, before the end of Prohibition. Which did not stop anybody from drinking nonstop. Despite this, or, more likely, because of it, nobody had any trouble getting alcohol, and there was usually someone available everywhere selling it, even in police stations.

Another odd bit is that in the stories where it matters, twenty years old is still a minor. This makes things confusing at times, because it means two women the same age might, one, be out on their own and married, and the other still under control of their parents, and also treated as adults by the rest of the characters. This was mostly just hinted until the final story, The Thin Man, which is more clear about ages and relationships.

Nick and Nora do another thing that I mostly only see in old movies: they go to sleep after 5 a.m. and get up somewhat before 5 p.m.

After reading these stories, it is no wonder that Hammett was such an influence on the mystery genre. These are very good stories, very well told. The Glass Key, his first non-detective detective story, started off rocky, but it was brutal once Hammett caught his stride.

The final book, The Thin Man is witty and brilliant almost all the way through. All of these stories are witty, but The Thin Man has the best quotes, such as

“How do you feel?”
“Terrible. I must have gone to bed sober.”

However, it includes what must win the award for Most gratuitous retelling of the Donner Party in a (semi-)serious mystery. At one point one of the characters reads the story, not even out loud, and we get an encyclopedia entry for four pages. I’m guessing that, since this was serialized before publication as a novel, that he was paid by the word and needed more money for mistresses and alcohol. Yes, I can see the Donner Party as a metaphor for the main family, and also for the murders, but four pages of it that the narrator didn’t even hear being read stopped the story in its track.

If you enjoy mysteries and you haven’t read Hammett, or if you’re missing any of his novels, I recommend this collection.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only previous experience with Dashiell Hammett (apart from the classic films made from his movies) was a short story featuring The Continental Op. I was a little surprised at the amount of dry wit that was mixed among the wisecracks - some of the humor is very nuanced. I also found his style to be more streamlined and plot driven in comparison to someone like Raymond Chandler who seemed to be more about style than plot coherency. Mr. Hammett sets the scene with concise bits of description, his characters are developed through action and the stories follow a clear path to resolution. His themes seem to run along the lines that almost everyone is corrupt in some way, and even though it might be difficult to attain, justice of one kind or another IS possible.


RED HARVEST: For my money the best of the bunch. The Continental Op blows into a corrupt town called Personville - known by locals as Poisonville - to find that his client has been murdered. As he goes about solving the murder, one thing leads to another, then another, and in the process he decides to clean up the town by turning the whole hierarchy of corrupt police, bootleggers, and racketeers against each other and against the old man who has established himself as czar over the town. The Continental Op is adept at manipulating the various factions against each other even when he's not really sure what the result will be "Plans are all right sometimes. And sometimes just stirring things up is all right." The Op is smooth, and cynical... yet he believes in justice and personal honor.

THE DAIN CURSE: Three connected stories that feature Dain family descendant Gabrielle Leggett, who is convinced that she suffers from the tragic family curse that causes terrible misery and hardship for those of the Dain blood as well as those who surround them. It's three different mysteries that are interconnected by an overriding theme and the final solution ties everything up in a fairly tidy manner. It's interesting, not great in the same way of some of Hammett's other stories, but definitely not sub-par.

THE MALTESE FALCON: Possibly Hammett's most well known novel. Private detective Sam Spade becomes involved with a group of thieves who are out to cheat and/or kill each other in their quest to recover the title statue. I'm probably going to break with a lot of other reviewers because I just am not that crazy about this particular story - I really think the first person narrative is Hammett's strongest style and this is told in third person. It's a good story but I think both RED HARVEST and THE GLASS KEY (also told in third person narrative) are much better. Might be because I'm more familiar with this one than any of the others - because of the classic film - so it wasn't as new or exciting to me to discover all these interesting characters and their various angles in attempting to best one another and Spade.

THE GLASS KEY: Gambler Ned Beaumont, best friend and right hand man of corrupt political boss Paul Madvig, discovers the body of a Senator's son lying in the street. Because of implications that Madvig might be involved Ned sets out to find the killer amidst a brewing gang war between Madvig and a rival crime boss. This is a GREAT story. Not a typical story of good guys versus bad guys this is a story full of flawed, corrupt people - there are no innocent bystanders. Much like in RED HARVEST there is a sense of desperation among many of the characters as they try to serve their own interests while still coming out on the winning side.

THE THIN MAN: Former detective Nick Charles and his wealthy socialite wife Nora return to Nick's former home town, New York City, to spend the Christmas and New Year's holidays only to be reluctantly drawn into a rather complicated murder mystery involving an eccentric inventor and the inventor's equally odd family. This is chock full of wisecracks, wit and silliness - especially in the banter between Mr. and Mrs. Charles. It struck me as almost a parody of the old fashioned English mysteries that often involved upper crust families trying to remain "civilized" in the midst of some inconvenient murder that is trying to disrupt their holiday routine. Instead of a well mannered detective who is trying not to cause any undue trauma to the family you have the hard drinking, wisecracking American detective who isn't the least bit concerned about the family's reputation (since "they're all crazy" anyway) and is more interested in getting a drink than being involved in the investigation. It's a good story but I have to admit that had I not been familiar with the movie of the same name I don't know if I would have been able to follow it so well or pick up on all the humor in much of the banter and wisecracks.

Other than a few racial and homosexual slurs that were common expressions for the time and a lot of violence in some of the stories (RED HARVEST particularly) there isn't anything that would prove particularly offensive to a modern audience. All content falls well within a PG rating.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is for The Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon.

I was surprised to learn that Hammett wrote only five novels and only one of them had Sam Spade as a character. He is credited with being the creator, or one of them, of the hard boiled detective figure. He is also, I read, considered to be one of the finest mystery writers ever. Well, I enjoyed the books but more from a historical perspective. The detectives were certainly heavy smoking, hard drinkers (always with a flask in the pocket and a cigarette dangling from the lips) and obviously had a liking for the ladies. Hammett's descriptions of his characters' physical appearance and surroundings was meticulously detailed but never tedious or boring. The action was fast and enough blood was spilled to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty of today's readers, but without the gory detail found in today's novels. Thank goodness. And I think all of them made better movies than books. But that's just my opinion.

[Michael Flick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterworks.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Complete Novels
by Dashiell Hammett

There are five novels in this collection; Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key & finally, The Thin Man.

The first two feature the anonymous detective of the Continental Op Detective Agency. The Maltese Falcon features Sam Spade, The Glass Key "tells the story of gambler and racketeer Ned Beaumont". The Thin Man features Nick and Nora Charles, a pair of dipsomaniacs; Nick, a retired detective & Nora a wealthy heiress.

I was one page into The Glass Key, when i realised i already knew the story. I have an audio-book copy, I'd forgotten i had listened to a couple of years ago. Of all the characters in these stories, i think Ned is probably my favourite & i may well read The Glass Key sometime in the future, as i have an eBook copy.

I didn't read The Thin Man. I tried to read it last year & just couldn't get into it. I thought it was really showing it's age & the 'humour' left me cold.

Quotes;

1. Red Harvest:

"I'm catching cold. By the time anybody comes, if they ever do, I'll be sneezing & coughing loud enough to be heard in the city."
"Just once," i told her. "Then I'll strangle you."
"There's a mouse or something crawling under the blanket."
"Probably only a snake."
"Are you married?"
"Don't start that."
"Then you are?"
"No."
"I'll bet your wife's glad of it."

2. 'The Dain Curse'

"I switched off my lights, left my door open, & sat there in the dark, looking at the girl's door & cursing the world. I thought of Tad's blind man in a dark room hunting for a black hat that wasn't there, and knew exactly how he felt."

3. 'The Maltese Falcon'

"The boy raised his eyes to Spade's mouth & spoke in the strained voice of one in physical pain: "Keep on riding me & you're going to be picking lead out of your navel."
Spade chuckled. "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter," he said cheerfully. "Well, let's go."

Summary

Overall, i would have to say i enjoy Raymond Chandler's prose to Hammett's. If you like period Hard-Boiled detective stories, complete with soul-less, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal characters, (particularly Sam Spade), then these stories are for you.
If, like me, you prefer your PI's to be intelligent, introspective characters, who deliver their lines with wit, eloquence & dry humour, read Raymond Chandler or James Sallis' 'Lew Griffin' series.

I don't regret reading this collection. It may seem that way, but i don't think time has been as kind to Dashiell Hammett as it has to Chandler, or will, I'm sure, be to James Sallis, et al.

It's 3 stars out of 5 for me.

[sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know that I've ever read five novels by one person back-to-back in this fashion, but it does shed some interesting light on the development of Hammett's style.

1. Red Harvest: the first Continental Op novel and a great one at that; the plot twist of the Op having to clear his own name is particularly inventive.
2. The Dain Curse: Absolutely brilliant. The things left unsaid, and their implications, are more powerful than most anything else Hammett has written.
3. The Maltese Falcon: A classic that deserves to be so. Amazingly, the Huston film adaptation follows the story practically chapter for chapter.
4. The Glass Key: The weakest link. The fact that Beaumont isn't a detective kind of throws a chink in the armor.
5. The Thin Man: Brilliant. I cheated and read the chronology in the backmatter before starting this one; nevertheless I'd like to think that I'd have noticed Hellman's influence on Hammett's prose. Brilliantly realized, often hysterical, and significantly lighter in tone than any of his other works.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure if this was the first book I ever bought myself with my own paycheck (as a 15-year-old theater usher), but it was one of the first and is certainly the oldest one I still own. I picked it up again recently after exchanging tweets with Hannah about this piece in The Toast, and decided to reread The Dain Curse, the Hammett novel I remembered least well. In my memory it was weirder than it is -- I suspect the phony-occult aspects stood out more because they seemed so unusual to me then (the more I read 30s and 40s detective fiction, of course, the more I understood that as a part of the genre). In this, the second Continental Op novel, our nameless detective keeps being drawn back to the mysterious goings-on surrounding a young women who is convinced that she carries a family curse and is evil. It's well-plotted and a lot of fun, unsurprisingly; Hammett never disappoints. Well worth revisiting.

[Clementine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The intricate and cleverly crafted plots play host to a bunch of interesting characters who operate, rather dubiously, in whiskey-drinking-hat-loving 1920-30s America. The best bit: the unaffected and sharp dialogue, packed with both cynicism and humor, spurned endless imitators—but none can out-match Hammett and his signature flair.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicely bound collection

[Mike Mikulski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed these five Hammett "who-done-its" from the 20's and 30's. The characters are not as rich and dark as you find in Raymond Chandler stories. Hammett's carry more similarity to the novels of Agatha Christie. Both Hammett and Christie lay out a wide cast of characters surrounding a crime as the protagonist, Sam Spade, Ned Beaumont, Nick Charles etc., interacts with all of the suspects, solving the mystery in the final chapter. The difference is Hammett paints the scene with a noir brush instead of darkness hidden under English civility.

Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, originally serialized in the 1920's Black Mask detective magazine, read closer to the noir mysteries of Chandler. Red Harvest set in a corrupt and crime-ridden western mining town plagued with countless murders that runs red with blood. The Dain Curse follows a femme fatale prime suspect supposedly cursed by the actions of her family in 1920's San Francisco.

The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key and The Thin Man read like intricate screen plays (which they eventually were) I couldn't help visualizing Humphry Bogart, Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet as Sam Spade, Joel Cairo and Kasper Gutman while reading The Maltese Falcon. Although in the book's description Gutman's gelatinous obesity seems closer to Jabba the Hutt than Greenstreet.

I also kept visualizing William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man. The banter between Nick and Nora and Nick's mixture of wit and intelligence as he subtly tries to comb out the facts from an evasive cast of characters is classic. Nick and Nora don't seem to feel the effect of the Depression or the massive number of cocktails consumed in Prohibition era 1932 New York.

I have never seen the film version of The Glass Key starring George Raft, so the read was like a first time read through of a screenplay. Set in an un-named city west of New York, Ned Beaumont tries to get to the bottom of a murder that soon pulls in the town's machine boss mayor, relatives of the state's senator and numerous politically connected crime figures.

All five are well woven and fun to read for the language and settings of the time.

[Yourfiendmrjones · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took a whole summer but by god, I finished one of the best book collections I’ve ever read. Or re-read.

I read The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man in my teens because, you know, awesome movies. And I remember really loving them a lot. But until now, reading The Glass Key, The Dain Curse and the amazing Red Harvest, I never got how witty Hammett is, without Chandler’s need for “She came into the room like blah blah something blah blah.”

You know. The thing Spillane took and made into his entire oeuvre.

Hammett is enough of a veteran Pinkerton that he shows the hard shoe leather left on the streets and cheap hotel room floors for the average private eye. But he’s also a witty enough writer to show how over it most of these guys are by the time the plot starts. You can hear their eyes rolling whenever someone starts offering excuses and lies.

I cannot recommend these books enough.

[Susana Ory]

Me he leído el de "Cosecha roja", en el que empieza resolviendo un asesinato y acaba limpiando un pueblo como si fuesen los establos de Augias, y aunque tiene conocimiento del medio por aquello de que trabajó para la Pinkerton y están bien escritos, con ciertos toques de humor, no consigo engancharme como debería, dado el género. La vida es muy corta como para aburrirse leyendo.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dashiell Hammett is a go to author in the mystery genre. How great is it to find five books in one collection. Some of the tales are familiar and others more obscure, but all take the reader on a mystery ride.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five stars is for Red Harvest. The rest (aside from Falcon) I can live without. Red Harvest is a revolutionary novel that more or less invented hardboiled detective fiction. Other lesser writers like John Carrol Daly had their own hardboiled dicks but Hammett was the real deal: a Pinkerton op who had seen the sleazy side of corporate greed and dedicated the rest of his life to criticizing it in his fiction and as a member of the Communist party. Hammett's intelligent use of detective fiction to critique power was eventually embraced by later writers like Chandler and Macdonald while Daly's ham-fisted brutality found its supporters in Spillane and any number of later-day knock-offs. You probably can tell which tradition I favor.

Red Harvest itself is a brilliant story where the Continental Op (Hammett's unnamed detective) pits two warring factions in "Poisonville" against each other, essentially annihilating the criminal elements in the town. Sound familiar? Akira Kurosawa ripped it off in Yojimbo and then was ripped off himself by Sergio Leone in Fistful of Dollars. Did Hammett ever get credit for that?

Hammett's prose style is worth the read and became a major influence on my own terse writing. One sentence says it all: "Out of the car, gunfire." I think it's one of the greatest sentences in American prose.

[Alger Smythe-Hopkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a collection, and like all collections it's uneven. But it's Hammett, and even though he had a problem with composing tight and coherent plots, this volume demonstrates his mastery of the language and noir form. Arguably, Hammett invented the genre and it's so invigorating that it's kind of fun to compare Red Harvest to what Dame Agatha was cranking out at the time: The Mystery of the Blue Train; The Seven Dials Mystery; Partners in Crime; Murder at the Vicarage.... I'm going to propose that one reason for Christie's transition from the remote and cerebral Hercule Poirot to the more witty and intuitive Miss Marple may have been sparked by her realization that Poirot was outmoded as a detective by the hard-boiled Continental Op. Who can say for sure, but I hope it's true.
So, let's run the list.
Red Harvest: Is there any story that more defines the anti-hero than Red Harvest? Somewhile ago it was pointed out to me that this novel is the basis of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and so also the direct inspiration for A Fistful of Dollars. That is a very impressive legacy (less notable is the 1930 adaptation which made it...a comedy?). Now that I am aware of these connections the linkage is obvious: a nameless hero arrives and exploits the existing divisions in a corrupt village to initiate a kind of creative destruction that may not restore order but resets the clock. A remarkably violent novel, and that's because this is operating with a mature version of Hammett's 'stirring the pot' style he created with the earliest Continental Op stories. Poisonville is a pot of nitroglycerine, and so the blowup was inevitable.
The Dain Curse: Three investigations rolled into one, and the subject of a truly mediocre 1970s TV mini-series. This is a novel that I love, right up until the ending which reveals the 'curse' to be a silly device to tie three very diverse investigations into a single book, but there are themes that tie them together. Part one starts as a jewel heist, then becomes an outrageous spoof of a heist story with a ridiculous but entertaining solution, one that just barely tees up Part two. Part two begins as a spook tale, but wow it goes weird. Then comes Part three... I'm not sure why I am genuinely bored by this fairly straightforward murder investigation. I suspect it's because the conclusion is the aforementioned artificial device, but it's also that it's something already done better elsewhere and there really isn't a heart to the meandering investigation. Now meandering isn't a bad thing when it's misdirection, but the wrap up comes as a deus ex machina and I always leave this book a little let down. On the other hand, this book includes some of the best descriptive writing Hammett ever did, and he set the bar on great descriptions.
The Maltese Falcon: A tight puzzle box of a novel that was also made into a pretty good film (you may have heard of it). Absolute perfection of the form. How do you even review such a towering achievement except to say how much you love it?
The Glass Key: This is my forgotten Hammett novel, and I had no idea it was put on the silver screen a few times back in the pre-war period. These productions starred Veronica Lake, George Raft, Alan Ladd, William Bendix... so these weren't small time films either. I do know that I have trouble remaining engaged with this novel, especially following the twists of the plot since it's very episodic. It's a good novel, but maybe not as visceral as the prior three or as fun as the next. I suspect it's a victim of the middle child syndrome. Also, the machine politics mostly reflect the concerns of the 1930s and it makes this book harder going. Still very good, but in a collection with the others, it is kind of overshadowed.
The Thin Man: This one is a delightful piece of wooly fluff wrapped around a solid piece of detection steel, and again was a film about which you may have heard something. Since The Thin Man property is the only one of Hammett's that I am aware of that was bought for production while still in serialization, I kind of assume that accounts for why this one is lighter in vision and more propulsive than the earlier novels. Imagine writing knowing that your heroes were William Powell and Myrna Loy. In my mind, the film and the novel are inseparable, but only in the best ways. This novel is so enjoyable, and the organizing investigation so clever and fresh, and the heroes so engaging... This is just a must-read novel.

So on the whole, raves for all of them (with a commitment by me to revisit The Glass Key because it has to be good too and I just haven't discovered it yet).

[Nayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any of these books make a good read, but they aren't fine literature in the sense that Raymond Chandler is fine literature. Hammett's first psychological novel, "The Dain Curse," is over thought, but compelling, while his second attempt, "The Thin Man," falls all over itself and the random tawdriness of the protagonists distracts from the plot at large. Lots of red herrings, none of which are remotely compelling. Hammett's Sam Spade has half the soul of Chandler's Marlowe and a quarter the soul of Hammett's own heartless, nameless Trans-Continental Detective Agency operative starring in the majority of his short stories.

Hammett's take on sex is not for the faint of heart, for the record, it's hardboiled, soulless, and sometimes stomach churning for something that never occurs "on page."

[Rupert Dreyfus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I own this very book in hardback and have read it a couple of times. It's a very nice book with Bible-style pages. They are thin and prone to smudging so turn those pages carefully if you ever get yourself a copy.

Hammett is probably one of my favourite writers of dialogue. I once kept a journal, writing down all of the fantastic phrases I came across in an attempt to speak like one of his character. I've grown up since then (only by a couple of years though).

I someday want to write hardboiled stories just to flirt with the dialogue. In fact Hammett was probably responsible for making me appreciate dialogue as an important aspect of storytelling.

[Lollie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't finished all of these stories, just "The Thin Man" and "The Maltese Falcon," but I would recommend getting the collection . . . The Thin Man was a quirky story (although a bit gimmicky). I really liked "The Maltese Falcon" quite a bit more. The pace was slower, with more narration and a bit less dialog, so the plot was a little easier to follow. I am in love with both protagonists, though if Sam Spade were real, he would win me over any day. The characters in the Maltese Falcon are GREAT, and even if you've seen the movie already, it won't spoil the book.

[Gail]

Another San Fran impulse purchase. But come on, how many times can you buy a book from City Lights? I HAD to pick something up there, and I thought it was only appropriate to pay homage to a fella who not only left his mark on detective/crime writing but who also made the city such a huge part of his novels. (We actually ate at John's Grill - one of the settings in Maltese Falcon - while we were there - it was SO good!)

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hammett is a master of the genre. I like his prose better than the other father of hardboiled crime, Raymond Chandler. It's nice, straight-to-the-point, and unadorned, though it avoids being staid or boring. There's a nice energy to it. I wasn't as impressed with The Dain Curse or The Glass Key, but Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man are all excellent.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the best detective fiction you can get your hands on.

[David Absalom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally completed! Red Harvest and Maltese Falcon great. The Curse and Glass Key nothing to brag about. Thumbs down The Thin Man.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful volume of Hammett's novels. It was a real pleasure ready all these tremendous novels back-to-back in a beautifully crafted hardcover volume.