In the stories and novellas he wrote for Black Mask and other pulp
magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, Dashiell Hammett took the detective
story and turned it into a medium for capturing the jarring textures and
revved-up cadences of modern American life. In this volume, The Library
of America collects the finest of these stories: twenty-four in all,
along with some revealing essays and an earlier version of his novel
The Thin Man.
Mixing melodramatic panache and poker-faced comedy, a sensitivity to
place and a perceptive grasp of social conflict, Hammett's stories are
hard-edged entertainments for an era of headlong change and extravagant
violence. For the heroic sagas of earlier eras Hammett substituted the
up-tempo, devious, sometimes nearly nihilistic exploits of con men and
blackmailers, fake spiritualists and thieving politicians, slumming
socialites and deadpan assassins.
As a guide through this underworld he created the Continental Op, the
nameless, laconic detective, world-weary and unblinking, who serves as
protagonist of most of these stories. The deliberately unheroic Op is
separated only by his code of professionalism from the brutality and
corruption that run rampant in stories such as "Zigzags of Treachery,"
"Dead Yellow Women," "Fly Paper," and "$106,000 Blood Money."
Hammett's years of experience as a Pinkerton detective give even his
most outlandishly plotted mysteries a gritty credibility, and his
intimate knowledge of San Francisco made him the perfect chronicler of
that city's waterfronts, back alleys, police stations, and luxury
hotels. By connecting crime fiction to the realities of American streets
and American speech, his Black Mask stories opened up new vistas for
generations of writers and readers.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in
length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are
printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
