The Golden Horseshoe and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Middle Years, Volume 1

The Continental Op

by Dashiell Hammett

Follow crime fiction’s toughest hero from San Francisco to the Mexican frontier in the third installment of the Collected Case Files of the Continental Op
 
The Continental Op is short, fat, and aging—but don’t let his appearance deceive you. Handy with a gun, and always willing to take a roundhouse to the chin, the Op is the toughest sleuth San Francisco has ever seen. And when a rich Englishwoman hires him to find her estranged husband, the Op thinks he’s in for an easy job. But the husband is an addict last seen in Tijuana, and finding him will take the hardboiled detective past the border and into a hellhole called the Golden Horseshoe.
 
Before Nick Charles or Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett made his mark with the adventures of the Continental Op, whose particular brand of justice defined the legendary Black Mask style. In “The Golden Horseshoe,” “The House in Turk Street,” and “The Girl with the Silver Eyes,” the Op follows his cases from civility to temptation and back again.

Genres: Short Stories, Mystery

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2000

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

[Zain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ugly Enough for Ten People!

Dashiell Hammett is not famously known for his Continental Op detective series. But he should be. This series is magnificent!

The episodes in this book are each a winner. Our hero is intellectually gifted. Short and fat, but full of tongue-in-cheek humor. And you follow along mesmerized as he sweep up the clues and set a precedent!

Our clever detective is bursting with impeccable insults, and as you pursue him throughout the book, you are perfectly entertained.

Another crime is unraveled. So…it’s time to move on.

Wish I could give more than five stars. 💫💫💫💫💫

[Gary Sundell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in this volume include car chases, gunfights, tough dames and the nameless detective who stars in all the Continental Op stories. All of the three stories in this volume are from Black Mask magazine. The final two stories are longer and would qualify as novellas. Hammett's writing is improving with each story.

[Lonny Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I joined Goodreads, I read mainly cozies. Cozy mysteries, and fantasies, detectives, witches, elves, and so on. If the writer can write plain English and tell a good story I usually award 4 stars. It can be easy to forget that there are writers who reach beyond those simple criteria and deliver more. Readers do not usually consider detective fiction to be literature. Odd really, considering writers of literature such as Hemingway and Faulkner had great respect for writers like Hammett and Chandler. Hammett and Chandler are two of my very favorite authors. I believe they raise the detective novel to the level of literature. Both of these authors honed their writing skills with short stories for publications like Black Mask, a pulp magazine of the '20's and '30's that specialized in Noir. Hammett often featured the Continental Op, a nameless gumshoe who worked for the Continental Detective Agency. Many of these stories featured characters drawn from Hammett's experience as a PI working the darker side of San Francisco. This book showcases three stories taken from the middle of his chronology of short stories. All were originally published in Black Mask, all star the Op. " The Golden Horseshoe" stretches almost to the length of a novella. All point pretty clearly toward "The Maltese Falcon" often considered Hammett's finest novel. They speak the language of their time, explore the dark side of human nature, and explode with sudden bloody violence. If you have any feeling for Noir, whether in book or film, these stories are where it grew up. They are a must read, darkness exposed and illuminated by a master.

[Benjamin Hahs · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

[Thomas Tyrer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dashiell Hammett and Elmore Leonard are my go-to authors when I want to read something relatively short, entertaining, and consistent. Hammett again does not disappoint. "Golden Horseshoe" is a fairly brief collection of a short story and two novellas drawn from the pages of 1930s pulp detective magazine, Black Mask. It reads like a time gone by, which is one of the reasons I like Hammett so much. The hard-boiled patter (from men and women alike) is certainly not of today's continually PC landscape, and we're regrettably lost a lot of the "character" it reflects in true life that Hammett uses to such great effect in his fiction. Another fun book.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Realistic??? I do not believe it.

I like short story mysteries. I enjoy the continental op but I do not believe they are realistic. That much fist fighting is nonsense! So is all the underworld killing. And a whole lot more. But by just skipping the nonsensical fights I enjoy them fine.

[Juergen John Roscher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good surprise ending to this detective story. Dashiell can spin a good hard core detective story.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐1/2

[Florin Pitea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raymond Chandler avant la lettre. Recommended.

Merged review:

Liked it a lot.