Dashiell Hammett

"Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business."—Samuel Spade, private investigator

"Spade...is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached."—Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon first appeared in the pages of Black Mask magazine in 1929. Almost immediately it was acknowledged as not

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Dashiell Hammett was a crime writer who elevated the genre to true literature, and The Thin Man was Hammett's last-and most successful-novel. Following the enormous success of The Thin Man movie in 1934, Hammett was commissioned to write stories for additional films. He wrote two full-length novellas, for the films that became After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man. Bringing back his classic characters, retired private investigator Nick Charles and...

One of only three Sam Spade short stories, this one involves a blackmailing poet, a seductive chanteuse, her rough-hewn stage-door-johnny, and, of course, murder. Recorded before a live audience in New York.

The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New York's coolest crime-solving couple. Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick's client. Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities...

"Half the jobs that come to a private detective are like this one: three or four days-and often as many weeks-have passed since the crime was committed. The police work on the job until they are stumped; then the injured party calls in a private sleuth, dumps him down on a trail that is old and cold and badly trampled, and expects-Oh, well! I picked out this way of making a living so …" As a detective with the San Francisco branch of the Continental...

After the death of his partner, San Francisco private eye Sam Spade is dragged into a quest for a priceless statuette.

A dashing lineup of elegant crime tales and gritty hardboiled detective stories, alternately menacing and cozy, with two exotic locales, and murder in the mix. Stories in this set include: Dashiell Hammett's "The Creeping Siamese", performed by John Shea - The Continental Op gets his man C.S. Montanye's "A Shock for the Countess", performed by Fionnula Flanagan - Intrigue in the alps in this clever tale of a jewelry heist Ed McBain's, "Improvisation",...