Product Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

One of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century, Dashiell Hammett gave us crime fiction stripped down to its most subtle and searing essentials and, at the same time, elevated to literature. The diamond-sharp prose and artfully manipulated intrigue for which he is known are on full display in the four classic short stories and two riveting novels published here in one volume.

The Continental Op, Hammett’s anonymous antihero, was the indelible prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. Single-minded, emotionally detached, and decidedly unglamorous, he narrates the four linked stories collected here—“The House in Turk Street,” “The Girl with the Silver Eyes,” “The Big Knockover,” and “$106,000 Blood Money.” In THE DAIN CURSE, the Continental Op takes on his most bizarre case, that of a wealthy young woman who appears to be the victim of a deadly family curse. And THE GLASS KEY—Hammett’s own favorite among his works—features his most cynical and morally ambiguous hero, Ned Beaumont, caught in a hard-boiled love triangle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #719800 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-04
• Released on: 2007-09-04
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 664 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780307266699
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
“Dashiell Hammett is an original. He is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer.”
—BOSTON GLOBE

“Hammett could no more vulgarize his imaginative methods than he could his spare and elegant style . . . Hammett’s art . . . transform[ed] the possibilities for art among his successors.”
—NEW YORK TIMES

“These [Continental Op] tales show Hammett writing with the precision of a diamond cutter.”
—NEWSWEEK

“Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best.”
—THE TIMES (London)

“Hammett had to fit social realism into a suffocatingly contrived form. He did it with language—densely spare exposition and multilayered dialogue. He gave us a spellbinding male discourse—The Maneuver as moral crusade, the job holder’s aria and torch song.”
—from the Introduction by James Ellroy

About the Author
Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland in 1894 and died in 1961. After working as a private detective and serving in World War I, he turned to writing and became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America.

James Ellroy is the author of The Black Dahlia, My Dark Places, and L. A. Confidential.

Customer Reviews

Not Free SF Reader
This Hammett collection contains two novels, and four short stories, of which 'The Big Knockover' is easily the best.

Dain Curse : The Dain Curse - Dashiell Hammett
Dain Curse : The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett
Dain Curse : The House in Turk Street - Dashiell Hammett
Dain Curse : The Girl with the Silver Eyes - Dashiell Hammett
Dain Curse : The Big Knockover - Dashiell Hammett
Dain Curse : $106000 Blood Money - Dashiell Hammett


This novel is a bit of a mess, with a story wandering in and around, to San Francisco and back, with a dodgy cult, family history, drugs, murder, and more.

You'd think all that could be made fairly interesting--but not if your plot is all over the shop, like in the case of this novel.

2.5 out of 5


One long stumbling sequence as a political operative ends up in a situation between his boss, a senator, his daughter, the murdered senator's son, and the odd heavy that likes to bounce him around the place.

Oh, and also his mum. Plus his bookie owes him money.

This novel is ok, I'd probably call it around a 3.25, though.

3.5 out of 5


Chaired Op.

3 out of 5


Cheque scam kill.

3 out of 5


Colorful gangster cull setup.

4 out of 5


Removing Papadopoulos.

3.5 out of 5