The Continental Op

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.

“Seven brilliant short stories based on the author's experience as a detective”

His name remains one of the most important and recognisable in the crime fiction genre. Hammett set the standard for much of the work that would follow INDEPENDENT
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
THE WEEK

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was born in Maryland and worked in a number of menial jobs until he became an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His experiences as a private detective laid the foundations for his writing career. His work includes RED HARVEST, THE MALTESE FALCON, THE GLASS KEY, THE THIN MAN and some eighty short stories, mostly published in Black Mask magazine.

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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