Dashiell Hammett
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"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
...Author
Language
English
Description
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...
4) Red Harvest
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty-even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
Author
Language
English
Description
This collection consists of nine crime novellas which were originally published in magazine form in 1924. The plots of Hammett's stories were drawn from his actual experience as a Pinkerton detective. Hammett viewed the process of detective work not as the pursuit of a few elusive clues, but rather the tedious business of extracting relevant evidence from an overabundance of information. The Tenth ClewNight ShotsZigzags of TreacheryOne HourThe House...
7) The Thin Man
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The Continental Op is a short, squat, and utterly unsentimental tank of a private detective. Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young, wealthy, and a devotee of morphine and religious cults. She has an unfortunate effect on the people around her: they have a habit of dying violently. Is Gabrielle the victim of a family curse? Or is the truth about her weirder and infinitely more dangerous? The Dain Curse is one of the Continental Op's most bizarre cases...
Author
Language
English
Description
Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett's tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing...
Author
Language
English
Description
"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...