Crime Stories and Other Writings

The Continental Op #2.5

by 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 Stories, Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Noir, American, Literature

934 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2001

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

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved absolutely every single short story collected in this book. Most of them (20 of the 24) feature Hammett's nameless Continental Op character, one of my favourite characters ever. The remaining 4 stories are all one-offs, with different characters in different locales. By far the most complete collection of Hammett short stories out there (especially the Continental Op stories). The retail price may be a bit steep, so I highly recommend buying it online.

Also included (I guess that's where the 'Other Writings' part of the book's title comes in) is 'an early typescript' version of The Thin Man. This is not 'The Thin Man you know & love. The version included here is [1] very different and [2] unfinished. Not wanting to confuse the final and unfinished versions (down the road, I mean - memory can be a tricky thing), and also not wanting to tarnish the luster of The Thin Man as I know it, I decided *not* to read this version. But that doesn't affect my rating of the book in the least; I got it for the crime stories, anyway!

If you've only ever read a few of Hammett's short stories, this is a great book for you. And if you haven't read any Hammett yet, well... what are you waiting for?

Highly recommended for fans of crime fiction, mysteries, or 1920's detective stories.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are years when you read a book. And then there are years when a book reads you.
2019 was my Dashiell Hammett year.

Not in the cute, let's-play-detective way. No. That was the year I slid into the back alleys of noir, my pockets full of cynicism and my reading lamp casting shadows sharper than razors. It started, as these things often do, with a recommendation from a friend. The book? Crime Stories and Other Writings. The author? The man who made noir bleed ink—Dashiell Hammett.

Before Hammett, I thought I knew what crime fiction was. Sleuths with odd quirks. Cozy murders in tea gardens. Whodunits wrapped in tweed. But Hammett? He didn’t care who did it so much as why, how, and what it said about the rotting soul of civilization. Reading him felt like being slapped across the face with a leather glove dipped in sarcasm.

This collection wasn’t just about The Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man. It was the deep cuts. The raw, tight little tales—clean as a scalpel and twice as precise—most of them set in rooms that smelled of bourbon, regret, and cheap desperation.

Hammett didn’t waste time. Not his characters', not his readers'. You get in, get bruised, and get out. And it’s glorious.

There’s something fascinating about how he does so much with so little. A man walks into a room. He lights a cigarette. He says two words. Boom—character sketch done. You know him. You’ve seen him. Maybe you are him.

Reading Hammett in 2019 felt like the literary equivalent of drinking black coffee with a loaded gun on the table. It stripped sentiment. It mocked idealism. It replaced the polite “Why?” with the grim “How much is it gonna cost me?”

But here’s the twist—the Hammett twist, if you will: Beneath all that hard-boiled stoicism, there is longing.

Not the big, operatic kind. The quiet one. The flicker of decency in a man who knows he’s already too far gone to turn around.

That contradiction is Hammett’s signature. His detectives don’t just solve crimes—they wrestle with a decaying world where truth is slippery and justice is... negotiable. Take the Continental Op stories—those anonymous agents from the Continental Detective Agency. No names. No glamor. Just grit and moral erosion. The Op doesn’t save the day. He gets through it. He makes decisions he doesn’t even like—but they’re necessary. And that made him real.

Reading those stories in 2019, I felt like I was watching the 21st century unspool in sepia. Corrupt systems. Broken alliances. The illusion of control. And people—mostly just trying not to drown. Swap out the fedoras for smartphones, and we’re still there, aren’t we?

What made the collection special was also the “Other Writings”. The essays, letters, fragments. You get to see the man behind the myth—Hammett the political rebel, the literary craftsman, the haunted veteran. The guy who once said:

"I have no desire to write literature. I want to write good yarns."

And yet—he did both.

His language is a study in restraint. Every sentence tight. Every word earned. There’s no fat, no flourish. Just action, implication, and the occasional line that slices through you like a whispered threat. Hemingway may have gotten the fame for that minimalist style, but Hammett made it bleed.

And it’s not just the writing. It’s the rhythm.
The syncopation of pulp.
The music of menace.

There were evenings in 2019 when I’d put the book down and just stare into space, as if waiting for a shadow to move in the corner of the room. Hammett had that effect. He made you question people’s motives. He made you suspicious of silence.

And somewhere along the way, I realized this wasn’t just reading—it was tuning into a whole psychological frequency. A frequency where morality doesn’t shout; it mutters.

By the end of the year, I had internalized Hammett. I was talking like one of his characters.
No small talk. Just raised eyebrows and loaded silences.

I rewatched The Maltese Falcon with fresh eyes. I reread Chandler and saw the homage. I even flirted with writing my own noir short—until I realized that Hammett’s ghost was watching and shaking his head.

To conclude: Crime Stories and Other Writings isn’t just a collection. It’s an education. A mood. A worldview in sepia tones.

If you’ve ever felt the world was more smoke than mirror, this book will feel like home. Just... don’t expect redemption.

That’s not how Hammett rolls.

[Orrin Grey · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon, I decided to check this out and I ended up devouring the whole thing in every spare moment I had between reading slush and the billion or so other things I was working on at the time. Consider me a Hammett fan.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge Hammett fan and I really only picked this up for the 4 stories it contained that I'd never read before. Now I've read his complete works! High, high recommend folks.

[Ed [Redacted] · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of short stories. I am a fan of Hammett's novels and his short fiction is nearly as good. I liked most of the stories but anything featuring the Continental Op is going to be at the top of the list.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful set of stories! Hammett is without a doubt the master and the American private eye/noir genre in both short and long form.

[Julia B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I cannot believe how long it took me to finish this book. The reading slump it put me in was truly surreal. What I’m struggling to understand, however, is why it was such a slog. I think anthologies just in general make slow reading for me, as each story requires my brain to switch over, which it is infamously not good at doing. This is not Dashiell Hammett’s fault, who is by all accounts a good writer with style, interesting characters, and relatively intriguing plot concepts. His personal experience as a private eye adds a realistic flavor to his stories that others I’ve read totally lack, and it definitely gives him an edge.

One thing I would note is Hammett’s preoccupation with shoot-outs, car chases, and fistfights, which to me have just never been engaging to read about. Watching in a movie? Sure, maybe. But reading? Unless you have an imagination directed by Michael Bay, I just feel like it’s so many words for so little reward.

On a related note, because Hammett is more preoccupied with the violence and the day-to-day investigative work of a detective on a case (which can be fun), his mysteries do not have that satisfying Arthur-Conan-Doylesque dropping of hints where the answer is under the reader’s nose the whole time. You are simply not given enough initial information to solve it yourself; you are forced to follow an unbelievably competent detective around as he interrogates different people and inspects crime scenes. I am more partial to the Sherlock Holmes School of Detective Mystery, but that’s not to say there is no value or intrigue in this one. But it does mean less emphasis on the mystery and more on the action, which is just not for me.

Hammett does a great job with setting, however, at least for San Francisco, and the various characters the Continental Op encounters all have distinct appearances and vibrant personalities. You get to know his coworkers at the Agency as well, and I always like a throughline.

Out of personal interest, I have to note that several literary critics, due to their chronological overlapping and other things, have compared Dashiell Hammett to Ernest Hemingway via similarities in style. Personally, as the self-appointed President of the Hemingway Hate League, I do not see it at all. I mean, they’re both white American men who wrote short stories with self-inserts who were zealous alcoholics and spent all their time cheating on their wives, but that describes literally 90% of well-known 20th-century authors. Outside of that, Hammett is generally a much better writer than Hemingway: 1) his stories have plots; 2) his stories are not self-obsessed and repetitive; 3) though he himself may have been a cheating and abusive alcoholic, this doesn’t really feature in his work, whereas “alcohol, sex, and personal trauma” could be Hemingway’s tagline; and 4) Hammett is actually funny and can write realistic dialogue that humans could believably exchange.

Okay, this review just ended up turning into a Hemingway roast. To balance things out, let me include the one known quote Hemingway made about Hammett:

“Remembering a fine evening we spent listening to Mr. Dashiell Hammett tell us not to be mugs — That tall white-haired drink of contented cowpiss — The talented cheap bastard.”

It’s giving...iconic. Sh*t-talking legend Ernest Hemingway. Maybe the best thing he ever wrote.

Anyways, to conclude, speaking as someone who decidedly did not enjoy Hammett’s most famous work The Maltese Falcon, my favourite story was “This King Business,” which nobody talks about because of its very limited publishing. This is because its main theme is revolution and Hammett was trying to publish it amidst the Red Scare(s). Despite leaving the cozily familiar setting of San Francisco (even the United States altogether), this story shows a distinct savvy for understanding the dangers of American involvement in foreign politics while still having likable characters, a fast-paced plot, and action that actually does put you at the edge of your seat.

Speaking of, Hammett was arrested several times for being a Communist. Some iconic quotes:

When asked by McCarthy whether he thinks it reasonable for the government to purchase and distribute books by Communists when it is fighting Communism, Hammett replies: “If I were fighting Communism, I don’t think I would do it by giving people any books at all.”

“Communist to me is not a dirty word. When you are working for the advance of mankind it never occurs to you whether a guy is a Communist.”

Long story short, do not do what I did. Read maybe 1-2 of Hammett’s detective stories on your own time, whichever ones pique your interest. Or, better yet, maybe just read his biography. Because wow, the Continental Op ain’t got nothing on this guy.

[Darryl Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's not a Mt. Rushmore of American private eyes but Hammett's Continental Op wouldn't be one of the faces on it if there was. That's because he's a modest, faceless everyman though he's hardly anonymous or devoid of personality. I prefer the Op over Hammett's more infamous creation Sam Spade. That probably puts me in the minority, but I don't mind. Spade is not a particularly nice guy, on the other hand the Op is a regular Jack-the-lad, his voice like that of an old friend's to the reader. Even though he's a Roaring Twenties lawman who breaks heads and takes names he turns a blind eye to Prohibition, as eager to go into a speakeasy as the next man. It's worth mentioning there's a lot more Continental Op material than there is about Spade too, about six times as much. Fully two thirds of Hammett's crime fiction starred our man from the Continental Detective Agency instead of falcon statuettes, glass keys and thin men.

DASHIELL HAMMETT: CRIME STORIES AND OTHER WRITINGS collects two dozen of the 36 stories Hammett published about the Continental Op, most of them novelettes. And distinguished, authoritative writing it is. The novels RED HARVEST and THE DAIN CURSE initially consisted of four Op novelettes apiece. I personally have never seen any of those eight segments published home or abroad in their original standalone form (and I've looked). That leaves only four other stories to collect if you want them all on your shelf. Three are easy to source. That fourth and elusive final Op caper, available nowhere but THE RETURN OF THE CONTINENTAL OP (1945), cost me as much as I paid for this volume! 'Death and Company' is, ultimately and unfortunately, for only the most diehard of collectors, a disappointing seven-page vignette. Beyond a shadow of a doubt the weakest entry in the Op's otherwise superlative casebook, it's unsurprising it's uncollected with the others. With the exception of 'This King Business' all 36 stories first appeared in Black Mask, the most feted extinct pulp magazine this side of the equally defunct Weird Tales. THE MALTESE FALCON also debuted in the Mask's pages before Knopf brought it out in hardcover; they'd already published HARVEST and DAIN.

If you're reading this you probably appreciate the exploits of the Op, one of the pioneering first person hardboiled American private dicks, but not the first. Carroll John Daly's 'Three Gun Terry' sneaked onto Black Mask's table of contents months ahead of the Op. Terry Mack is Daly's pilot fish for his enormously popular Race Williams character, a homicidal maniac who rationalizes his shooting sprees as private detecting. The name of one of the stories in DASHIELL HAMMETT: CRIME STORIES AND OTHER WRITINGS is `Bodies Piled Up,' a title as gruesome as Daly's `The False Burton Combs' is clever for its misdirection. I shan't give away its secret to the few who've not read it. Cap Shaw didn't suffer journalistic fools lightly and even though he hated Daly's stuff he published it anyway because a Race Williams yarn touted on the Mask's cover boosted sales by 10,000 issues. Daly's stories are ridiculous enough to be farces, glutted with a toughness as counterfeit as a schoolboy's playground bluster. In his lifetime Daly enjoyed more glory in Black Mask than Hammett, but in the long run the Hammett legacy enjoys more success and respect, not that that ever does deceased authors any good. This is not to say Daly's writing sucks, it often makes for entertaining lightweight reading, but it's all hat and no cattle. The Op's romps in the Mask are steeped in a realism still resonant and relevant. If I may borrow a phrase from Hollywood Detective Dan Turner, the Op's adventures are as serious as `a rodney probing [one's] sacroiliac.'

Hammett's strengths as a storyteller and prose stylist as well as his background with Pinkerton's enabled his work to endure. On a side note, Lillian Hellman claimed Hammett didn't work for the agency for as long as he often alluded to. His own publisher Knopf hailed him as better than Hemingway, a conceit, of course, but one I happen to agree with. I'll take Hammett's drunken private eyes and femme fatales over Hemingway's drunken sportsmen and forlorn expatriates anytime. Not to rip on Papa, but why read something to depress yourself? Hemingway's characters don't liberate and lift the spirit the way Hammett's do. To this day Hammett's influence on mystery novelists remains immense, justifying the mythic proportions of his literary reputation.

Every Op story in DASHIELL HAMMETT: CRIME STORIES AND OTHER WRITINGS is good, if not great. In the product department the consumer gets his money's worth, excellent fiction on nice paper expensively bound. Library of America puts together handsome well-constructed editions designed to be read often and resist as much manhandling as an old medical desk reference printed in the forties. The quality of Library of America's books cannot be overemphasized; I own other collections from this same house, their books are built to last and can handle wear and tear. And they don't have those godawful Deckle edges.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I prefer Raymond Chandler to Dashiell Hammett, I have great respect for the latter -- although this extremely useful LOA volume does see Hammett blossom as a cut-to-the-bone, no-bullshit prose practitioner through the Continental Op stories. While there are some amazing stories in here ("The Whois Kid" and "The Assistant Murderer" both stand out because Hammett had an incredible talent for balancing nose-to-the-streets with systemic criminal justice), it's clear that, by the time Hammett got to "Woman in the Dark," he was more or less done with the short story/novella form. I would contend that his voice (and that of the Continental Op, or what the Continental Op would transform into) worked far better in his novels.

[Vikram Katju · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fine collection of Hammett stories. The most notable (and most enjoyable) of these stories feature a bull dog of a detective called 'The Continental Op'. One particular issue pertaining to this collection of Hammett stories needs to be highlighted, and that is that the story 'This King Business' has been inadvertently mutilated by the publishers of this book. For more on this see:

http://www.donherron.com/hammett-the-...

New editions of this book may have had this issue fixed; for more on this, see:

http://www.donherron.com/hammett-this...

[Tweiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Danielle Hammett’s writing holds up almost 100 years later. His crisp, clean, lean prose was decades ahead of his time. He deserves as much credit as Hemingway for bringing the writing canon into the 20th century. Well worth reading. He could write a good short story, and not many can - which unfortunately doesn’t stop them from trying.

I

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hammett's writings are classic for a reason. If you like crime and thriller, he's an author to read. Take into account when these stories and books were written because the slurs in here are, you know, woof.

[John Bleasdale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's nearly impossible to give this series anything but a perfect score. Other than the small print which is needed to compile so much into a small, neat package, I can really never find complaints over the Library of America series. I adore Dashiell Hammet, so I was pretty certain I would enjoy this book. Some of the material was a re-read for me, but that is never a problem. Once you drop into Hammett's world it's pretty hard to want to leave. The Continental Op pieces are generally my favorite--I am a huge fan of the Op, partially due to his realism and partly due to his humor. It feels like Hammett enjoyed writing that particular series. I often take a year or more to read books from this series----I like to take my time with them and also tend to intersperse other books while reading them (something I find that I pretty much always do when reading long books or series). This one is a library title so I had to read it straight from the go to make sure I finished it. I had to re-check it out but I did it! This book is of course complete as all get out and has everything from novels to an unfinished manuscript of the first draft of The Thin Man. Two of the pieces are small but very interesting- a list of tips for those writing detective fiction and little pieces of info from "Memoirs of a Private Detective". These were both fun and interesting and for me gave a hint of Hammett's personality. The notes in the back of the book contain almost a dictionary of the slang scattered throughout (some of which is quite dense but part of what makes the stories entertaining) and I have to say, despite my decent knowledge of noir books and film I did not know a lot of it. My favorite story was Woman in the Dark--not really typical of Hammett's work in it's layout but so entertaining and tense. Highly recommend.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about writing in these 900 plus pages. The short seems to suit Dashiell more than the novel and it only caught myself feeling over saturated with these stories once or twice. I think I liked the stories where he steps away from San Francisco and the Continental Op more, if only for the novelty. This includes stories like nightmare town and women in the dark. However the house on Turk street, a Continental Op story is great good example of how to play with form even in a traditional framework. All told, a great collection and as close as you can get to all Dashiell's published shorts.
On a more general note, I'm really appreciating the completist approach to fiction writers. It seems the only way to tease out the nuance of their style and major themes. Only reading a representative story or their canonical text seems to be a bad compromise. Unfortunately I don't know how this could play out in a school.

[Rishindra Chinta]

I didn't finish this collection of short stories so I won't give it a rating, since it would be unfair to rate a book without knowing how good what I didn't read was. I read 7 out of 24 stories and they weren't bad but they were just okay. I didn't want to read 17 more stories if they were just going to be okay. And I'll admit I usually don't finish short story collections and I made it farther in this one than with most of the others I've tried to read. For most of the short story collections I've tried to read, I only read the first two or three stories before I abandoned them.

Anyway, I gave ratings to the 7 stories that I did read right after I finished each of them:

Arson Plus: 3/5
Slippery Fingers: 3/5
Crooked Souls: 4/5
The Tenth Clew: 3/5
Zigzags of Treachery: 4/5
The House in Turk Street: 3/5
The Girl with the Silver Eyes: 3/5

Maybe I'll come back to this book someday, though.

[A. Macbeth’s bks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific.
Ok I read through all the Dashiell Hammett I own.
Will dip back in in future to remind myself of his writing style. Maybe…perhaps I’ll do that .
The last story in this volume which I’ll call AN EARLY TYPESCRIPT has a do-it-yourself ending which is wild to ponder upon after getting to know Hammett’s oeuvre and bio in such detail.
Ok I’m not an English professor specializing in Hammett but I got a good start in studying him.
There are other stories he wrote for other magazines so these two Library Of America Volumes are not his complete oeuvre.
He allowed his writing to be sorely manipulated by magazine editors, by Knopf and thus Library Of America and then by Hollywood moguls. He could only have felt sorely victimized due to his political incorrectness. Too bad he couldn’t have kicked all those people in the arse because he could really write without any of their supervision.
Currently the story CORKSCREW sticks out in my mind as especially compelling.
Have a lovely day!

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not a detective story aficionado. Over the course of my life, I’ve read most of Hammett’s novels, and one or two Chandler novels. This is a pretty narrow set.

I haven’t yet read all the stories in this collection. They are good. Duly entertaining and gripping. Like any mystery series, there are the sudden revelations by the Continental Op out of nowhere (The Golden Horseshoe) and many fortuitous escapes (The House on Turk Street).

I was worried when I started the stories. I figured out the first two mysteries myself: the girl's faked kidnapping (Crooked Souls) and the brother and sister were actually a couple (The Tenth Clew). But the stories got a little weirder with more unusual twists as I read.

There is some unfortunate Chinese stereotyping, and plenty of odd names: O’Gar, Gantvoort, Quarre, Pangburn. But the stories achieve their goal: some fun adventure writing.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

So about 900 pages later I feel pretty confident I have a handle on Hammett, and for purposes of this blurb I'm going to compare him to the other titan of classic crime fiction, Raymond Chandler. Hammett is a lot less flowery and a lot less romantic than Chandler. He certainly has a good smart-assed tone and some great lines in that idiom, but Chandler beats him for sheer poetry and inspiration. However, Hammett excels in the nature of the mysteries themselves: the riddles to be solved and the way his wiseacre Continental Op goes about taking care of business. There's little emotion involved, and no dames that our hero's gonna pine after, even once they've been hanged, just a lot of bullets leftover to bite down on.

[Joelendil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dashiell Hammett is the master of hardboiled detective fiction, and this is almost exactly what I would want from a collection of his short stories and novellas. We start with a minimalist introduction: no spoilers and no pretentious drivel trying to make this anything more than the pulp entertainment that it is. Then we get most of his Continental Op stories, a few other short stories/novellas, and some of his thoughts on being a real detective and writing detective fiction. The partial rough draft of what would eventually become The Thin Man did annoyed me a bit as I’m not a fan of publishing rough drafts, especially incomplete ones. Aside from that (and the occasional cringey product-of-its-era racism that you always get in pulp fiction of this era) I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisiting the Continental Op stories. They all have at least one passage that is pure gold. Here's a paragraph from the story "Women, Politics and Murder":

"Alone in the library, I cocked an eye at the ceiling and considered the information that Lina Best had given me. But I soon gave that up - no use trying to guess at things that will work themselves out in a while. I found a book, and spent the next half-hour reading about a sweet young she-chump and a big strong he-chump and all their troubles."

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this before I had to get it back to the library, but the stories I read were all top-notch detective crime fiction, as hard-boiled as they get. Hammett was one of the founders of the American detective story, and although the first tale or two is weak, he quickly found his bearings. Entertaining tales of early 20th century city crimes with arson, murder, larceny, kidnapping and con games galore, Well worth a look-see.

[Pt Bunch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strickly as an entertainment, I might give 4 stars. As a book showing the development of Hammett as a writer, the book is exceptional. Dashiell Hammet is imperfect and this book offers stories which are awe inspiringly gorgeous and others which fall flat. Hammett quit writing because he felt he had begun rewriting stories he'd already done, telling the same stories over. I can see that in these stories. I can also see a bright, hard, sharp mind creating beautifully entertaining stories.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of stories by Hammett. I think I've read all of his novels and I thought I had read all his short stories until I saw this volume. It has several stories that I haven't seen in any other anthology, including a unique two-parter about a criminal invasion of an island with a military them. A must for the Hammett "completist" or even just a real fan.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I know where all the old gangster/crime/mystery movies of the 30's and 40's got there ideas. Sure, some of the dialogue is cliched (to us)but it was how the people of the underworld of crime talked back in the late teens and through the 1920's. Classic pulp fiction with a bit more intellect behind it. An excellent short story collection!

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read some Hammett forever and it was nice to finally get around to these short stories. It was good reading for the subway, but some of the prose in this was a little too mechanical for my taste. I expected more attitude and atmosphere.

[Gabriel Valjan · Rating 5 out of 5]

He influenced Hemingway. Not the other way around. So said Gertrude Stein and I'm not inclined to argue with the lady. I've also read Richard Layman's Shadow Man and DH was both self-destructive and idealistic. The Hellman introductory essay in The Big Knockover is also worth reading.

[Daniel DeLappe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always loves Hammett's writing. Bare knuckle writing. Fantastic dialogue. Great pace, and fun to read. Loved his advise to crime writers. Going to find a good biography if possible. The chronology at end of book left me wanting to read more

[epstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll just never find another Raymond Chandler....

[Akiva Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent crime fiction.