The Big Book of the Continental Op

The Continental Op

by Dashiell Hammett, Richard Layman (Editor), Julie M. Rivett (Editor)

For the first time ever in one volume, all 28 stories plus one unfinished and the 2 serialized novels starring the Continental Op--one of the greatest characters in the storied history of detective fiction.

Dashiell Hammett is the father of modern hard-boiled detective stories. His legendary works have been lauded for almost one hundred years by fans, and his novel 'The Maltese Falcon' was adapted into one of the greatest classic films of all time - starring Humphrey Bogart.

One of Hammett's most memorable characters, the Continental Op, made his debut in 'Black Mask' magazine on October 1, 1923. It was the first of a set of stories and novels that would change forever the face of detective fiction. The Op is a tough, wry, unglamorous gumshoe who has inspired a following that is both global and enduring. He has been published in periodicals, paperback digests, and short story collections but, until 2017, he has never had the whole of his exploits contained in one book! 'The Big Book .. ' features all the original standalone Continental Op stories, the original serialized versions of 'Red Harvest' and 'The Dain Curse,' and previously unpublished material. This anthology of Continental Op stories is the only complete, one-volume work of its kind.

Librarian's note #1: the short stories are: 1. Arson Plus, 2. Crooked Souls, 3. Slippery Fingers, 4. It, 5. Bodies Piled Up, 6. The Tenth Clew, 7. Night Shots, 8. Zigzags of Treachery, 9. One Hour, 10. The House on Turk Street, 11. The Girl with the Silver Eyes, 12. Women, Politics & Murder, 13. The Golden Horseshoe, 14. Who Killed Bob Teal? 15. Mike or Alec or Rufus, 16. The Whosis Kid, 17. The Scorched Face, 18. Corkscrew, 19. Dead Yellow Women, 20. The Gutting of Couffignal, 21. Creeping Siamese, 22. The Big Knock-Over, 23. $106,000 Blood Money, 24. The Main Death, 25. This King Business, 26. Fly Paper, 27. The Farewell Murder, 28. Death and Company and, 29. Three Dimes (unfinished).

Librarian's note #2: the two serialized novels are: 1. The Cleansing of Poisonville (which later became Red Harvest), and 2. The Dain Curse.

Librarian's note #3: this entry relates to the collection, 'The Big Book of the Continental Op.' Each of the individual stories and novels can be found elsewhere on Goodreads. There are a total of 28 short stories plus one incomplete; they can be found by searching GR for: 'a Continental Op Short Story.'

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Short Stories, Noir, Detective, Mystery Thriller

733 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2017

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

[Jack Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars. Well worth reading. My discovery of the Continental Op. He gets involved in the darndest situations - murder, kidnapping, bank robberies, double-crossings, and even a coup d'état in the Balkans! With loads of 1920s low-life. Just the names are a joy. There's Big Flora and The Shivering Kid, with Did-and-Dat and Angel Grace following close behind. The Op is the exact opposite of who one expects; he's short and rotund, not good looking, and doesn't seem that interested in the nicer things in life including either gender! Tough with little sympathy. A few highlights. You'll meet the two Mrs. Esteps in 'Zigzags of Treachery.' In 'The Girl with the Silver Eyes,' the Op gets hired by a lovelorn young man whose letters to his adored keep coming back. Simple? Far from it. On another occasion, he ends up in Tijuana Mexico for some real excitement when a woman hires him to find her estranged husband in 'Golden Horseshoe.' That's the name of a low-life tavern. I only ranked 8 of the 29 stories less than 4 stars. Get set for some racism, it's the 1920s. But the writing style of Hammett is glorious. I review each story and novel elsewhere. Enjoy. I did a lot. (Jun2021/Ja2025)

[Gabriel Valjan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no dearth of commentaries on Hammett’s contribution to crime fiction, or reviews of his Continental Op stories. The foremost value of Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett’s Big Book of The Continental Op, a door-stopper of a book, is its most obvious appeal: all twenty-eight Op stories are in one place. Organized. Annotated. The works. The double-column format is a matter of taste, but a future Kindle version could change the layout. Hint. Hint, Vintage Crime.

Less obvious, though more valuable to me are the essays that preface each block of Hammett stories. The stories are organized chronologically and by editor at Black Mask. This is a rare opportunity for readers and students to learn about the editing process. Hammett did not start out as a great writer, but he certainly showed up with an abundance of talent. Hammett was a natural at dialog. He also latched onto the idea that readers, regardless of genre, were tired of ponderous prose. He wrote lean journalistic prose. Hemingway was another such writer. Hammett worked with his editors, and the writing shows that he gave them what they wanted. And they also mentored him, though not with Max Perkins’s kid gloves. Both sides of the desk were clear on one objective: make money. Faulkner’s advice to writers to “write about your postage stamp” is evident in Dash’s hard-boiled creations. Hammett wrote about his days as a Pinkerton detective, but few writers can write to specification. He could.

You’ll notice that, with each successive editor, Hammett’s stories become increasingly violent. His chops for description and dialog sharpened. While one can argue that Hammett wrote to market, ‘sold out,’ the introductory essays make it clear that ill health had driven Hammett to the typewriter. Literally. He didn’t have time to have principles. He had a family to support. Off-and-on again with disability, he scrambled. At one point, Hammett had a ‘real job’ and made the princely equivalent of $50,000 in today’s dollars in 1926, and then he was alone, coughing up blood, isolated in an apartment to avoid infecting his family with TB. His stories earned him a few hundred unreliable dollars a year. With each new editor, he had to prove himself. Hammett honed the voice he already had – and I don’t think any editor or amount of study can give a writer that elusive ‘extra.’

This volume includes the serialization of Poisonville stories that became Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest. I pulled out my Library of America edition of Hammett for comparison, and I was stunned at how the Knopf editors touched every single paragraph. Every. Single. One. Hammett howled and complained (Knopf would later do the same to The Dain Curse). I leave readers to decide which version of Red Harvest they like better. I prefer the Black Mask version.

Note: Otto Penzler and Keith Alan Deutsch’s The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (2012) shows readers what the Knopf editors had done to the original text of The Maltese Falcon. My Hammett on Hammett blog post provides a glimpse into the editing process on The Maltese Falcon between Hammett and his editors. Hammett could edit himself, but it’s a real crime scene with what the Knopf editors did to his Op novels, in my opinion. Perhaps, scholars should revisit his five novels and offer fans of crime fiction the original texts.

[Darryl Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I prefer Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, that modest, faceless everyman, to the more well-known Sam Spade.

Spade is not a particularly nice guy, on the other hand the Op's first person voice is like that of an old friend's. 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. The Op is a Roaring Twenties lawman who breaks heads and takes names as well as turning a blind eye to Prohibition, as eager to go into a speakeasy as the next man.

Ten stories featuring the Op were omitted from Hammett's superb Crime Stories And Other Writings making it incomplete. THE BIG BOOK OF THE CONTINENTAL OP rights that wrong by collecting every Continental Op story the Dasher wrote, including one unfinished one! This is distinguished, authoritative writing too, so gritty it might've been written on sandpaper. The novels Red Harvest & 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. Those eight stories are included in their original form here, verbatim from the pages of Black Mask, a brand name you can trust. The elusive 'It' & 'Death and Company' round out this complete collection.

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 & Dain. The fabulous and unobtrusive annotations in THE BIG BOOK OF THE CONTINENTAL OP reveal that Knopf mercilessly edited every paragraph Hammett wrote. Purchasers of this book will not only own Hammett's authentic versions of his two Op novels, but finally have authentic versions of the tales found in The Big Knockover & The Continental Op paperbacks, tinkered with by Lillian Hellman.

If you're reading this you probably appreciate the exploits of the Op, a true pioneer of 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. In his lifetime Daly enjoyed more glory in Black Mask than Hammett, hard as that is to believe. In the long run the Hammett legacy enjoys more success and respect; 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.

To this day Hammett's influence on mystery novelists remains immense, justifying the mythic proportions of his literary reputation. His 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. Give me Hammett's drunken private eyes and femme fatales over Hemingway's drunken sportsmen and forlorn expatriates any day of the week.

[Bryan Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really fun book to read and also fascinating to see how Hammett's style changed based on the editorial input he was given. I'll also acknowledge that I am a fan of this style of story and might be a little biased in my review.

Also, please note, that these are as written in the 1920's including the use of names, words, and means of address that are now properly considered a slurs or disgraceful to people of color and females. The use of these words does present a feeling of authenticity of being there, present in the last 1920's but if you are easily offended you may well want to skip this or look for edited for modern sensibility versions of the stories.

The book is a collection of short stories written by Hammett for Black Mask magazine. It also includes two serialized novels also published originally in Black Mask. Black Mask was an early adaptor of Pulp Fiction stories and by the end of that era was one of the more dominant leaders of that literary style.

The first batch of stories are very matter of fact. The unnamed operative leads the reader through a complete investigation including descriptions of methods of operation and investigation. This first batch is noticeable for not having much of a "Pulp" feel to it at all, since there is almost no gun play and usually any violence takes place off screen. However, the stories are incredibly authentic and show the obvious experience Hammett had as a private investigator himself. It is fascinating to see how the investigators interact with the official police as well. This was during a time when private organizations were better funded, trained, and supervised, and the police were often lackadaisical and less efficient. The police welcomed cases where PIs were involved because things got solved without them having to work as much.

The second batch of stories was done under his second editor at Black Mask. These became bigger and more vibrant stories of adventure and much more of a pulp feel. They happened often in exotic locals, and began to feature the sexy femme fatale trope. The violence level ramped up in the stories and the Op himself uses his gun much more frequently. Underlying the flashy bits remains the very real sense of this is an actual investigation done by an actual investigator. Hammett continues to demonstrate his mastery of the investigative art and applies it to the increasingly fantastic stories.

The third and final batch of stories was done under his final Black Mask editor. This batch moves away from the exotic locals to much more believable levels but the violence and gun play go off the scale. The body counts in some of the stories become unbelievable and there is less of a sense of being present in the late 1920's as you read the stories because of it. Yet still, the who-dunnit part of the stories remains constantly excellent. His writing style also shows a progression of skill expected after so many years of writing in this final batch. His descriptions and internal monologs are sharp, concise and bitingly funny. I often stopped to read a sentence or two out loud to appreciate their art.

Finally the book ends with serializations of two of Hammett's novels, Red Harvest (called here by it's original name The Cleansing of Poisonville) and The Dain Curse. Both novels are presented as they were published in Black Mask and deviate noticeably from the books as they were published as complete stories. Especially in The Cleansing of Poisonville the violence is again off the charts crazy, between shootings, bombings and other wild stunts. This story was changed the most from it's pulp format to something more mainstream when published alone.

The Dain Curse is, I think, one of the finest stories in the collection. Even serialized it hangs together very well since it's more like four connected short stories than a single novel. Each story has a complete arc and solution continuing to display Hammett's brilliance with investigative technique, while bringing the violence and shenanigans down to a very believable level. The final story wraps the whole thing up showing how the hidden mastermind worked his plan (even though it didn't always go the way he wanted) trying to obtain his final goals. The characters reacted realistically even when that meant that the master mind's plan went awry, but it was refreshing to see the story take place organically instead of forced into some elegant master plan.

All in all, if you can see past the archaic use of language and have any interest in Noir style stories and hard boiled detective fiction you will miss out on an incredible inner view of how the genre came to be formed and the direction it was headed in 1929.

[Joseph Longo · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a Dashiell Hammett fan this is the big book for you. Reading it, you will think you have landed in paradise. It contains all his Continental Op short stories and novellas. Some are very good, some are great, and most are still involving. They are all written in Hammett's uniquely exciting prose, which in itself is a treat to read. (No other writer can use some many different vivid verbs to describe gunshots.) If you are not familiar with Hammett, the father of hard-boiled detective fiction, and are a fan of detective fiction, you should read Hammett's creation, the daddy of all detectives, the Continental OP, named because he is an operative (shamus) for the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the title indicates, this is a VERY big book of Continental Op stories. I've always been a big Dashiell Hammett fan but hadn't read much of his short fiction. This book contains the bulk of his short Continental Op stories that were originally published in monthly magazines. I am so grateful to have had to chance to read these stories, many of which hadn't been published in nearly 100 years. In my book, Hammett is second only to Chandler when it comes to detective stories and I loved reading all of these.

Some of the most interesting were the stories that would ultimately be rewritten and reworked into his novels. I liked seeing what stayed the same and what changed.

This is a MUST for any Hammett fans but be warned, don't try to read it cover to cover. You'll get burned out. And that's not how these stories were meant to be consumed anyways. There was supposed to be a least a month in between. I would read one story between each other book that I read. I highly recommend this method.

[Mike Malony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this book for Christmas in '19, had just spotted it on a shelf when my wife asked me what I wanted for the holiday. I remember an old friend looking for any more stories about this character a long long time ago, so I knew it would be good.

Started in in January of 2020, enjoyed the short stories a lot, but took a long pause during the lost year. Picked it up somewhere though due to seeing 'Yojimbo', and researching it's similarities to 'A Fist Full of Dollars', and seeing they were based on Red Harvest, by the same author, and that book was based on the series of connected stories called 'The Cleansing of Poisonville'. which is in this book. I can't say there is much of the starting story in either movie, though I sure can see the obvious inspiration. A town controlled by horrible people running multiple rackets, booze, guns, cops on the take. I prefer either movie.

I think I liked the short stories better than the two novels myself. I'd suppose that is my personal inclination these days, though it suspect it has more to do with the subject. These stories are a bit brutal, and nasty at times. All filled with some form of betrayal, and even the fellow Ops don't seem to trust each other all that much, though they do stick together.

All in all I'm glad I worked my way through this omnibus. Plenty of ideas for twists and turns, and it was sure fun hearing Sam Spades voice, I mean of course Humphrey Bogarts voice. When the Ops speaks, that voice always came off the page to me. Worth it just for that.

[Stven · Rating 3 out of 5]

These antique detective tales are still readable, partly because of Hammett's straight-ahead prose style, partly because there is no shortage of action in the crisp plots, and partly just because it's interesting seeing how the world has changed since Prohibition. After I had read a couple of the short stories, I thought I had the formula and was done with the book, but then I realized that there were some "novels," not really novels, I would say, but longer stories anyhow that weren't dependent on one quick punchline, included, and a couple of those held my interest for another hundred pages or so.

The one criticism I would make about the editing is the way they've scattered footnotes throughout the text. Ought I seriously to be distracted from my reading by an asterisk leading me to a footnote advising that a "rod" is a gun? Really, no. They could have given us a glossary of unfamiliar terms or put all the notes in a section at the back of the book.

Other than that, it's nice to have all the Continental Op stories available in one volume.

[Aaron Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Hammett and I love the Op. The challenge of this book is one of curation -- all the best stories are here, but so are the middling ones and the handful of bad ones, and after a while they all blend together. I guess I was disappointed, because I read a collection of Op stories and loved it, and expected to feel as much love for this phone book sized tome. Still, it is well-contextualized, and completists will be in heaven. This book made me realize that maybe I'm not a completist.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

The crown jewel of American crime fiction. Often imitated, never duplicated these stories changed the world and still hold up today. After decades of neglect they are finally collected in one place. If you've never read them you're in for a treat and if you've read them before you are also in for a treat.

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

[J.W. Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the genre of detective/noir/crime fiction, the one name that stands out head and shoulders above the others is Dashiell Hammett. Hammett is famous for his gumshoe heroes such as Sam Spade and Nick Charles, but before any of them made the scene, there were the adventures of a short, pudgy detective with no name, but simply referred to as the Continental Op.
This large doorstopper of a volume, edited by publishing director Richard Layman, and Hammett’s granddaughter, Julie M. Rivett collects the complete stories of the Continental Op in the order they were released for the “Black Mask” detective pulp fiction magazine in the ’20s and ’30s. In the stories within, the Op solves murders, is thrown into the middle of political intrigue, goes up against gangsters, murderers, and corrupt political bosses, and navigates the shadowy mean streets of 1920s San Francisco.
The stories are divided up into different management eras from Black Mask magazine, “The Sutton Years,” “The Cody Years” and “The Shaw Years,” with the Sutton Years being the most sedate and at times bordering on cozy mysteries, and The Shaw Years being the most intense and violent. The Cody and Shaw Years are personally my favorite eras, with the story of “The Scorched Face” being my favorite tale in the entire volume.
Also included are the serialized, unedited versions of Hammett’s two Continental Op novels, “The Cleansing of Poisonville,” and “The Dain Curse.” as they originally appeared in Black Mask magazine. Personally, I prefer “The Cleansing of Poisonville out of the two as it’s full of action and intrigue and I considered “The Dain Curse” to be rather lackluster and disappointing for my tastes. Reading the stories within made me wonder why Hammett didn’t branch out into other genres of writing as my favorite tale in this volume, “The Scorched Face” could have very well been turned into a weird tale/horror story with the right supernatural elements, and “This King Business” reads almost like a proto-Tom Clancy political thriller.

The stories I enjoyed and their synopses are as follows:

“Arson Plus”- When an inventor’s house goes up in flames, the Continental Op must track down and bring to justice the party(s) responsible.

“It”- A tough businessman’s associate goes missing under mysterious circumstances.

“Bodies Piled Up”- The Op finds himself in the middle of a deadly firefight between two gangsters at an Italian restaurant while searching for clues to solve a multiple homicide.

“Zigzags of Treachery”- The Op sets out on a mission to clear the name of the second wife of a well-to-do doctor, who has been framed for his murder.

“The House on Turk Street”- While searching for an assault perpetrator, the Op happens upon a very sticky situation.

“Women, Politics, and Murder”- The Op investigates the killing of a corrupt city politician.

“The Golden Horseshoe”- A woman’s drug and booze-addicted husband goes missing, and it is up to the Op to find him.

“The Whosis Kid”- The Op pursues a particularly deadly and dangerous criminal.

“The Scorched Face”- When the Op tries to locate a client’s missing daughters, he unearths more than he hoped to bargain for.

“Dead Yellow Women”- The Op uncovers a heated conflict of the international kind while trying to solve the case of a client’s missing and dead servants.

“The Big Knock-Over”- A veritable army of gangsters terrorizes two city banks, and the Op is once again on the case.

“$106,000 Blood Money”- The Op helps spearhead the hunt for the mastermind behind the robbery of the two banks.

“This King Business”- The Op is thrown into an international game of deadly political intrigue in post-WWI Europe with a youth who aspires to be king.

“Fly Paper”- Intriguing clues and events unfold when the Op works to track down a killer.

“The Cleansing of Poisonville”- The Op gets down, dirty, and mean as hell in order to mop up a city full of political corruption.

In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and look forward to reading Hammett’s other works. He truly was a brilliant author of detective fiction and all the praises of him are thoroughly justified.
I give “The Big Book of the Continental Op” by Dashiell Hammett a 4 out of 5.

[Paul Sand · Rating 1 out of 5]

[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]

So I got this book for Christmas 2017 from the Salad Daughter. It weighs in at 750 pages or so, and I immediately grasped that was way too much Hammett to read all at once. So I used a software solution: treat it as five separate "books" in my Book Picker script, spacing things out over … well, until now. There are 28 short stories and 2 "serialized novels" in the Big Book, all written for Black Mask magazine in the 1920s. (One story unpublished and unfinished.)

As the title implies, this is pretty much everything Hammett wrote with his "Continental Op" character doing the first-person narration. The Op is never given a name, but he describes himself as middle-aged and fat. He's fond of booze and cigarettes. He works for the Continental Detective Agency on whatever tasks he's assigned. But he occasionally goes above and beyond.

The short stories are, well, uneven. And (let's be kind) not really up to modern tastes. But they are kind of a revealing window into (mostly) San Francisco in the 1920s, and the tough-guy lingo at the time. Occasionally, they veer into weird territory, ("Corkscrew" has the Op going out to Arizona, getting appointed Deputy Sheriff, and messing around with horses and cowboys.) Characters are many, plots are complex, every single one is totally forgettable. (Except I remembered the cowboy bit.)

The serialized novels, written in the later part of the Op's career are better. A four-parter, "The Cleansing of Poisonville" was published (modified) as Red Harvest: the Op is sent into a corrupt town only to find that his client's been murdered. He seems personally offended, and takes it on himself to set the various criminal factions off against one another, and brings down the entire crappy apparatus over the four installments. (See the Wikipedia page for informed speculation on how it influenced modern popular culture.)

The other novel, The Dain Curse, is another four-parter, where the Op takes a liking to young Gabrielle, who he meets in the course of investigating a diamond theft from the laboratory of her father. Many people wind up dead. In the second bit, she's off to a join a religious cult, and the Op checks that out, resulting in more people dead. Finally Gabrielle gets hitched; while off on her honeymoon the Op is summoned by her husband who (you guessed it) is dead by the time the Op shows up. (In addition to many others.) And finally, the OP weans Gabrielle off her nasty morphine addiction, while discovering the sinister driving force behind all the carnage. According to the Wikipedia page, a 1978 TV miniseries based on the book was pretty good.

[Arafat Pratik · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short stories are mostly not worth reading. Too many of them are just too boring to go through. The interconnected stories - The House in Turk Street and The Girl with Silver Eyes stand out for me because of its multiple double crosses and memorable femme fatale and the last scene reminded me of the last scene of the movie Brick whose plot was more inspired by The Cleansing of Poisonville. But most of the stories simply do not have any memorable character so I had a hard time caring about what happened to them. Many of the seemingly interesting plots were also undone by somewhat ridiculous endings.

However, the highlight of the book is definitely The Cleansing of Poisonville. Its an ultraviolent story about a corrupt town with many gangs running the town and the Op stands alone against them to clean the city of all criminals. He plays all gangs against each other and stays close to the gold digger femme fatale Dinah Brand who is somehow connected to every thread of the plot. This is pure noir and its the kind of story for which I bought this book. Op reminds a lot of Reylan Givens from Justified here as he sows seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes and watch the dominoes fall. This novel deserves its classic status in the genre. It has been inspiration for countless movies and tv shows but the original story is as good as anything it has inspired. Hammet's mean and lean minimalist prose goes really well with all the tough characters and their cynical attitude. This is a true masterpiece.

The Dain Curse is a weird one. Its more of a series of interconnected stories where Op finds out how all the events are interconnected but you can see the ending miles away. Its not great by any means and especially The Hollow Temple part was particularly awful. The story is too sensational and stretches the reader's suspension of disbelief too much. The generally stoic and sarcastic Op shows a softer side to his character here which wasn't a bad surprise but it was definitely a letdown after the excellent adventures in Poisonville.

While all the stories are not great, Hammet's writing is easy and enjoyable to read. The sarcasm is top notch and the detached way of Op's narration is a lot of fun especially the way he describes a crowd of people. There are a lot of really funny sarcastic one liners that kept me going even though I did not care about all the stories and characters and sometimes even Op himself. He is not the most interesting protagonist and at times did things that made me hate him. But he is mostly a cool guy. I wish more stories were like The Cleansing of Poisonville.

[Zachary Houle · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in journalism school, I minored in film studies. The reason was more a time-management one than anything else. While I was out pounding the pavement as a journalism student, I didn’t have a lot of time for my classes. So, my theory went, “Take film studies, and if you have to miss a class, you can always rent the film being discussed and watched for viewing later when you finally have a chance.” It was a smart move on my part as, again, time was a commodity I had in short supply. However, when I did go to class, I loved it when they played a classic film noir detective story. I loved the moral ambiguity, the femme fatales with shifty allegiances, and the lack of morals held by authority figures. You really didn’t know what was going on.

That’s the one thing about film noir, though. The plots get awfully convoluted. I recall an anecdote about the filming of The Big Sleep, where the filmmakers went to author Raymond Chandler to figure out why someone had done a particular murder. His answer was, seriously, “I have no idea.” The gunplay, the dead bodies … all of it is to pump the plot along whether or not it makes any sense. So when you’re dealing with a hard-boiled detective story, forget being able to be as witty and smart as the private dick. You’re never going to figure it out.

Still, I jumped up at the chance to review The Big Book of the Continental Op. They aren’t kidding by calling this a “big book”: the collection is about 750 pages long, and is jam packed with 28 short stories (many of which are novelettes) and two serial novels all originally published in the 1920s and early ’30s in the Black Mask crime magazine. The author is Dashiell Hammett, who is widely considered to be the father of the hard-boiled detective story, and, by extension, film noir. Hammett is probably best known to modern audiences as the author of the novel that The Maltese Falcon film (well, there were actually three of them made during the ‘30s, but only one famous one) was based on. Before inventing Sam Spade, Hammett had another character that he heavily drew open: a fat, nameless detective who worked for the Continental Detective Agency, sort of modelled after Pinkerton, which Hammett actually worked for for a time.

Read the rest here: https://medium.com/@zachary_houle/a-r...

[Scott MacBurnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with most short story collections, some of the tales are very strong and others are less so, but on the average, there are a great deal more hits than misses, here. The unnamed "Continental Op" is, as a character, intensely neutral - lacking a name, most obviously, but also lacking a past, a future, or an identity. In that, it becomes easy to project oneself, as a reader, onto the eponymous narrator, since there is little (except for a sense of his height and somewhat frumpy build) to contradict whatever traits a reader may wish to imbue.

This is a double-edged sword, since by being so carefully translucent, the character becomes applicable to almost anyone, and yet by the same token - there is little about the character, on its own two feet, to hold the reader's attention. Since we never really know him, we can never really root for him, in the same sense that you can get to know Spade, Nick Charles, or Chandler's Marlowe. It is, instead, the narratives and the style of writing that Hammett depends upon to hold the reader enthralled and, for the most part, these are more than up to the task.

The world that the Continental Op occupies is, of course, gritty, riddled with crime, and not at all to be trusted. Violence (which grows exponentially as the stories progress) is commonplace and greed rules all. There is no room, here, for tenderness or romantic whimsy - like all good hard boiled fiction (and film noir), there is only room for the play, and when the dust settles and the gun smoke clears away, the shadows cast by those venetian blinds will fall only upon the ashen dreams of broken souls.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always been a fan of Dashiell Hammett's detective fiction, and this book is a very good collection of everything that he wrote (short stories, novellas, and two serialized books) for Black Mask Magazine from 1923 through 1929 about his Continental Op detective. This is a wonderful collection, and I very much loved reading it.

The Continental Op works for the Continental Detective Agency, mostly out of their San Francisco office. He is relatively short (about five foot six), aged about thirty-five or forty, and somewhat overweight. He spent some time in New York City and Chicago before ending up in San Francisco; he is not married, has no family, and throughout the stories he is nameless. But he is one of the best hard-boiled detectives that the Continental Detective Agency has; he is good at fighting, shoots his gun accurately, and is not above skirting the law to achieve his goals. While the agency will not do divorce work, the Continental Op has plenty to do with solving cases involving murder and various kinds of mayhem.

This collection contains the twenty-eight Continental Op stories Hammett wrote for Black Mask; several of the stories are novella length. There is also an unfinished story that was never published. There are also two serialized novels: The Cleansing of Poisonville, which was the basis for the novel Red Harvest, and The Dain Curse, which was the basis of the novel of the same name.

This was a wonderful book to read, and I am very happy to have it on my bookshelves.

[JoeK · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a reason that Raymond Chandler held Dashiell Hammett's writing in such high esteem. These stories are great, and oh so varied. Today's mystery books all seem to be centred on murders (especially serial killers) and little else. The Continental Op deals with kidnappings, bank robberies, missing persons, and more (but never divorce cases). Hammett is famous for basing his stories on his time working for the Pinkertons. He must surely have had quite an interesting time with them before he retired to write.

I bought this collection mostly to read the stories that haven't been available until this volume came out. Reading these stories now, made me very aware of how different the world was one hundred years ago. The Op doesn't drive everywhere, he mostly gets around by ferries (land and sea), trains, streetcars, and taxis. Cars and phones were not as ubiquitous back then as they are today. I think a person without some historical background would have a hard time navigating these stories. I've tried explaining to friends that in the twenties, you went into a drug store to use their phone. Except for train and bus stations, there were not many public phones around until the 1950s.

[Christian Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started this meaty read over a year ago and finally finished (most of) it tonight. Why? It contains every story of the legendary Continental Op ever written by Hammett.

There are a few duds here and there, but the vast majority in The Big Book is thrilling in both matter and setting. Not only do most stories feature great narratives, thrilling action sequences, and some wonderful (though sometimes hammy) dialogue, but this book can even be read as an historical document of what San Francisco was like in the 1920s.

The stories get better over the years, in my opinion, as Hammett tends to start writing novella-length stories, but the earlier ones range from thrilling bank robberies to dead mistresses and more. There’s even a Western and a post-war narrative thrown in for good measure.

I say I’m mostly finished. That’s because I haven’t read Red Harvest or The Dain Curse, two of Hammett’s novels printed here in their original serialized forms.

I do believe I’d like to review each novel individually. Can’t recommend this book enough if you like classic gumshoe stories. Hammett is THE master.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of stories from the classic pulp magazine The Black Mask. Hammett wrote these stories during the late nineteen-twenties and into the thirties, and while the writing isn't always up to the level that we see in a novel like The Maltese Falcon, they do lay the foundation of what so many writers (including Hammett himself) would later come to build on. Any noir writer owes a huge debt to Hammett. In these stories we see a private detective known only as The Continental Op. He's the archetype of Hammett's own Sam Spade, Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, and dozens of others. The stories are a bit unrefined by today's standards (Hammett loved to use exclamation points with his dialogue) but strengths outweigh the weaknesses. For instance, the manner in which Hammett describes his characters is enviable. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the early days of pulp fiction.

[Kasper · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much fun, it's great seeing Hammett's writing develop and get better and better as time goes. It's also awesome that The Op. eventually got his own great novel (and The Dain Curse ain't half bad either) on the way too. Also just for fun:

1. Red Harvest
2. The Big Knock-Over
3. This King Business
4. The Girl with the Silver-Eyes
5. $106,000 Blood Money
6. The Scorched Face
7. The Dain Curse
8. The Golden Horseshoe
9. The Gutting of Couffignal
10. The Whosis Kid
11. The House in Turk Street
12. The Tenth Clew
13. Night Shots
14. Bodies Piled Up
15. Zigzags of Treachery
16. Who Killed Bob Teal?
17. Corkscrew
18. Dead Yellow Women
19. One Hour
20. The Main Death
21. The Farewell Murder
22. Arson Plus
23. Women, Politics and Murder
24. Fly Paper
25. Creeping Siamese
26. Death and Company
27. Mike, Alec, or Rufus?
28. It
29. Slippery Fingers
30. Crooked Souls

[Gene Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who's not a Hammett super fan, this was a bit of of slog for me. It's a huge book with 28 or 29 short stories and 2 complete novels, with editorial commentary. I ended up reading it in bursts, stopping twice and putting it aside for other books before returning to it. But I *did* keep returning to it. There are points the words just flowed and I was carried away, turning pages long after bedtime. There were other times, try as I might, I'd reread the same paragraph a dozen times and never get farther. I think it was more where my head space was rather than any fault of the author. At times, I just wanted to read Sci Fi, or history, or graphic novels. But I kept returning to it. Those stubborn paragraphs washed away and I gained a deeper appreciation of the hard-boiled detective story when it was all done. I shelved the book in a place of pride, knowing I'll pick it up again to re-read a tale or two again and again.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of the Op, so I'm a big fan of this compilation of every story he has been in! I'd read some of these before, and I've read the two novels, but it was still a treat to reread them and newly read the rest! It was also pretty cool to read the novels in their original, serial form! I only disliked two of the twenty-eight stories, and they are the two set if non San Francisco Bay Area places, "Corkscrew" and "This King Business". "Corkscrew" has the Op as a wild west sheriff, and it just doesn't work. And "This King Business" is set in a foreign country and has a man trying to be king, and blah, blah, blah - boring. But 26 six outta 28 is a 93% success rate, and how can I complain about that kind of entertainment value? Great volume!

[Thomas Burchfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If you were a noir fan who found The Big Book of the Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) under your 2017 holiday tree, consider yourself blessed. If not, you owe it to yourself to buy it now, because this collection, lovingly assembled and edited by Julie Rivett (Hammett’s granddaughter) and Richard Layman (the leading Hammett scholar) is a treat from cover to cover as it opens a window onto a world and style of detective fiction now mostly gone."

I invite you to read the rest of my review at my web page: http://tbdeluxe.blogspot.com/2018/04/birth-of-hard-boiled.html

Thanks!

[Jerstyn Morehay · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are all 28 Continental Op stories as they first appeared when published in Black Mask magazine, which also includes the serialized versions of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, the former under its original title of The Cleansing of Poisonville. Rougher, rowdier, and at times grittier than the versions which later appeared in various collections throughout the years, edited for space, pace, and content, The Dain Curse especially gains something in its serialized form, and Poisonville, The Big Knockover, and The Whosis Kid among many others remain masterpieces of mayhem in any form.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised to find that Dashiell Hammett’s short stories – nearly all of which were written before his novels – were outstanding, even the earliest one’s. They were not mere juvenilia. Nor were they then cannibalized for his latter novels (as was often the case with Raymond Chandler’s short stories). They fully stand on their own.

For those wishing to read Dashiell Hammett’s short stories, I have discussed the proper editions to use (and, in the case of the LoA Crime Stories, NOT to use) in my review of Hammett’s Nightmare Town and Other Stories: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This is the second volume to read. It comes with a fine and useful Introduction and section commentaries.

The Big Book of the Continental Op (ed. Lyman, 2016):
All of these stories were published in the famous pulp magazine, Black Mask. Founded by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in 1920, they sold out quickly in 1922, and the editorship was taken up by George Sutton from 1922-1924. The earliest set of stories in this volume, “The Early Years”, were thus published under Sutton, and they are very good. They have very little traditional action/violence.


PART ONE: THE EARLY YEARS, 1923–1924

“Arson Plus” (1923) [v. clever; arson; switched identities] [5]

“Slippery Fingers” (1923) [fingerprints] [4.5]

“Crooked Souls” (1923) [kidnapping] [4.5]

“It” (1923) [Bonds; good, but a bit too convoluted] [4.5]

“Bodies Piled Up” (1923) [see Nightmare Town Stories = “House Dick”] [5+]

“The Tenth Clew” (1924) [real twisty, mini-novella length] [6-]



PART TWO: THE MIDDLE YEARS, 1924–1925

In 1924, Black Mask got a new editor, Philip Cody, who was more of a businessman, put more emphasis on action, violence, and sexual titillation. The Cody stories were much longer, averaging 14,000 words. The Continental Op got bloodier; the plots become more complicated; the women more seductive and dangerous; the crooks more professional. And dramatic confrontation, rather than simple description, increasingly served to advance the plot. Still, Hammett didn’t like Cody, and he quit the magazine in early 1926. I found some of these less interesting, because there was too much action.

“The House in Turk Street” (1924) [Shooting, corpses; Cody, supra. OK, but conventional] [4]
[This & the following story are linked = one novella]

“The Girl with Silver Eyes” (1924) [Novelette; b/c linked w/ above; too easy to guess] [4]

“The Golden Horseshoe” (1924) [Novelette; real good, save for the cheap shootouts] [5.5]

“Who Killed Bob Teal?”(1924) [see Nightmare Town] [4.5]

“The Whosis Kid” (1925) [Novelette; good, save for the cheap shootouts] [4.5]

“The Scorched Face” (1925) [Novelette; starts strong; but then too much ‘action’] [4]

“Corkscrew” (1925) [3]

“Dead Yellow Women” (1925) [3.5]

“The Gutting of Couffignal” (1925) [4]



PART THREE: THE LATER YEARS, 1926–1930

By the end of 1925, Hammett quite Cody, and got a job managing a jewelry store for good pay. But his TB flared up badly, and he was forced to quit, and to leave his wife and daughters for health reasons. Meanwhile, at Black Mask, Cody needed a new editor and hired Joseph Shaw, who had a remarkably varied past in journalism, as a stockbroker and in textiles. Though he had no experience publishing pulp mags, he was a good businessman. His primary goal was to separate Black Mask from the rest of the pulp-fiction field by virtue of the quality of its fiction, detective fiction. The idea was to get away from the sort of thing that had been done by Poe and Conan Doyle — that is, “the deductive type, the cross-word puzzle sort, lacking—deliberately—in all other human emotional values [i.e., British Golden Age Detection]. So, we wrote to Dashiell Hammett.… We wanted action, but we held that action is meaningless unless it involves recognizable human character in three-dimensional form.” Quite a break from Cody!! And by 1927, Hammett was back in the fold. And he then produced some of his best fiction to date, starting with “The Big Knock-Over”. Shaw nurtured his writers, encouraged Hammond to begin writing novels, put him in touch with Alfred A. Knopf (who was publishing H.L. Mencken, T.S. Eliot, and Willa Cather), and who eventually published under an imprint run by his wife, Blanche Knopf, the two Continental Op novels (both of which had been serialized in Black Mask), Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. By 1931, he had written two more novels, his two masterpieces (The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key), which had also been serialized in Black Mask. And that ended his association with Black Mask. “He had learned how to write fiction in his Op stories, and now his fiction had made him rich. He moved to New York, where he was the toast of the town; wrote his last novel, The Thin Man (1934); and turned to other interests” (including, according to some, ghost-writing Lillian Hellman’s plays – to put it in the strongest terms).

“Creeping Siamese” (March 1926) [This seems to have been the last piece written for Cody] [4]

* “The Big Knock-Over” (Feb. 1927) [Written for Shaw; big heist; linked to $106K] [4.5]

* “$106,000 Blood Money” (May 1927) [Sequel to “The Big Knock-Off”] [4.5]

* “The Main Death” (June 1927) [5+]

“This King Business”(1928) [Novelette; the youth who would be King of the Balkans] [5.5]

“Fly Paper”(1929) [Good, but a bit rushed…] [4+]

“The Farewell Murder”(Feb. 1930) [3]

“Death and Company” (Nov. 1930) [Very short; the last Continental Op story] [4+]

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

having all of the continental op stories in one place was great. You can see hammet's development and the effects of the different editors. I'd read red harvest before, but not as presented here. I think it is even better without the changes made to put it in novel form. I hadn't read Dain curse before. It is really put there, ( spoiler alert) ####### 5 year old taught to murder?!. Still Hammett was such a sparse and tight writer, he can put anything over

[Jason Bovberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these stories are stronger than others, but this exhaustive collection provides a fantastic overview of the Continental Op made famous in Black Mask. The tales grow longer and more complicated as the book progresses, also showing Hammett's maturation as a writer. I recommend spacing these out between other reads, as there's a sameness to the style.

[Mark Singer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a complete collection of all the Continental Op tales by Dashiell Hammett as they originally appeared in the pulp magazines. Includes all the short stories and both novels "The Dain Curse" and "Red Harvest". All of the Continental Op stories are told in first person, and we never learn his name. Recommended for all fans of Hammett, and for anyone who appreciates a good story.

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

Unbelievable finish for me, namely in the Dain Curse-Black Mask Mag version. That’s gonna stay with me for a while.
The Library Of America version of the Dain Curse was edited away to the point of blahness and censorship. Yeah, I do have both versions.
Poor Dashiell Hammett was extensively monitored and censored due to his political incorrectness, at the time.