The Continental Op: Short Story Collection
Dashiell Hammett
'Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best' THE TIMES
Dashiell Hammett is the true inventor of modern detective fiction and the creator of the private eye, the isolated hero in a world where treachery is the norm. The Continental Op was his great first contribution to the genre and these seven stories, which first appeared in the magazine Black Mask, are the best examples of Hammett's early writing, in which his formidable literary and moral imagination is already operating at full strength. The Continental Op is the dispassionate fat man working for the Continental Detective Agency, modelled on the Pinkerton Agency, whose only interest is in doing his job in a world of violence, passion, desperate action and great excitement.
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About Dashiell Hammett
Reviews for The Continental Op: Short Story Collection
INDEPENDENT
Seven brilliant short stories based on the author's experience as a detective
THE WEEK
He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used
Raymond Chandler
He is master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer
BOSTON GLOBE
The first fully "hard-boiled" hero in American letters
NEW YORKER
Hammett's prose is clean and entirely unique. His characters are as sharp and economically defined as any in American literature
NEW YORK TIMES
Great crime fiction started with Hammett
James Ellroy Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best
THE TIMES
Seven brilliant short stories based on the author's experience as a detective
THE WEEK