Photo: Photographer unattributed; published by Knopf · Dominio público · Source
Author
Dashiell Hammett
1894–1961
Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland in 1894 and died in New York in 1961. Before writing he spent several years as a detective for the Pinkerton agency, and that experience gave him something the crime fiction of his day lacked: the sense that crime was dirty, everyday and not at all elegant.
Red Harvest, from 1929, follows a nameless detective who arrives in a corrupt mining town and decides to set the gangs that run it against one another. The Maltese Falcon, from 1930, introduces Sam Spade and the hunt for a statuette everyone is willing to lie for. The Glass Key, from 1931, is a story of local politics, loyalty and gambling.
Hammett writes lean, with no spare adjectives and without telling us what his characters think. We have to work it out from what they do, as in life.
Their books in our catalogue
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The Maltese FalconDashiell Hammett
The Maltese FalconDashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
In 1920s San Francisco, private eye Sam Spade takes a job that drags him into the hunt for a legendary jewel-encrusted statuette, coveted by a crew of ruthless crooks. Hammett tells it all from the outside, through sharp dialogue and lean prose that never lets up. This is the book that defined the hardboiled detective: tough, ambiguous and hard to read.
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The Glass KeyDashiell Hammett
The Glass KeyDashiell Hammett
The Glass Key
Dashiell Hammett
In a city where votes and favours are bought, gambler Ned Beaumont is drawn into the murder of a senator's son, with suspicion closing in on his friend, the crooked boss Paul Madvig. Hammett writes with spare, hard-edged prose and razor dialogue, turning a whodunit into a study of loyalty and corruption as gang war looms.
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Red HarvestDashiell Hammett
Red HarvestDashiell Hammett
Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett
An operative of the Continental Detective Agency arrives in a Montana mining town so rotten its people call it Poisonville, and sets out to take on the gangs that run it. Clipped sentences, whip-crack dialogue and one ambush after another make this founding hard-boiled novel read like a film, leaving a bitter taste of corruption behind.
