Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was a prolific writer of short stories for the pulp magazines in the 1920s-1930s, but only wrote five mystery novels. Most of his works involved his anonymous detective The Continental Op, an employee of one of the big national detective agencies. Sam Spade and Nick Charles became popular because of the movies, yet didn't feature in much of this author's work. Hammett's greatest skill was his combination of terse presentation, witty dialogue, and a plain style, which is why literary critics put him in the school of Hemingway. But it should be pointed out that he followed the proper conventions of the detective story in presenting complex crimes that can be solved by deduction from clues. He is considered the progenitor of the Chandleresque hard-boiled private eye novel, although this already existed in the pulps for which he was writing; what he did do is raise the level of writing to the extent that it can be considered 'literature', making him one of the most influential mystery authors even without being prolific. The novels were serialized in "Black Mask Detective," hence their episodic nature with several discreet climaxes designed for the magazine trade, later smoothed out for book publication.
Hammett had an interesting life, being involved with the communist party and suffering persecution under McCarthy's HUAC; also a long-term involvement with the playwright Lillian Hellman. At one time in his life he was, off and on, a Pinkerton agent, where he learned the detective trade. But that is all beyond the scope of this web site.* All of his lasting writing was done between 1922 and 1934.
This, his first novel, is very disappointing, being an episodic compilation of short stories set in the corrupt mining town of Personville ('Poisonville'), modelled on Butte, Montana. The Continental Op has taken on the task of cleaning up the town, and his method is to set the different gangster factions against each other. It is sheer pulp fiction, with something like two-dozen or so killings, mostly shoot-em-ups of Keystone Kops freneticism in which practically every major character ends up dead. A couple of 'real' murders are solved by the Op using detection, but otherwise this does not rank as a detective novel. His dialogue is good, however, and some of the characters are well-drawn (especially the floozy Dinah Brand and the corrupt Sheriff Noonan). It is best to read this book as a parody of the gangster fiction of the time.
"The Dain Curse" (1929).
For those who are tired of reading too many modern 500-page mysteries that are
padded out with kinky sex, bloodthirsty insanity, and protagonists
crippled by angst, it will be a pleasure to pick up "The Dain Curse". 160 pages or so of beautifully contrived workmanship. If
you'll allow the analogy, it is like the old mechanical Timex watch I
had for twenty years as compared with my new answering machine. The
watch that never failed vanished into the hands of a mugger many years
ago -- one does not sentimentally hang onto something like that when a
knife is being held to your throat by a drug-addicted kid who'd kill
for a Big Mac hamburger. The answering machine, bought to replace the
one that recently died of old age at the age of five, which is about
the life expectancy of modern miracle machinery, is about the size of a
paperback book and has one button that does all (meaning it does
nothing any reasonable person would expect it to do -- the Timex, of
course, only needed to be wound, and adjusted when the clocks changed
for summer time); I've persuaded it at least to answer messages, but
at the expense of having a working telephone that can be used when the
machine is on: compromise deal with it now is to disconnect it when
I'm home, put it on when I go out, which means unplugging and
replugging all the different connection wires each time.
Is that business about 'technology' a pointless diversion? No, I don't
think so. "The Dain Curse" is both thriller and mystery, and
hard-boiled of course. The difference between hard-boiled and
traditional detection becomes a moot point when dealing with great
writers like Hammett and Chandler who purposely denigrated 'cosiness'.
You will find the same literary elements and narrative skills in both
approaches to mystery writing when they are well done -- and quite a
lot of overlap when it comes to fair clueing and a reasonable level of
erudition. But what is most admirable about Hammett is the stripped-down
and straightforward narrative, spiced with excellent dialogue of a
terse and often witty sort. Yes, the plot might be absurd, as is
"Silence of the Lambs" as a modern example, yet works not by
overwhelming the attention span by long passages of obfuscation and
psychology but by punching and jabbing like Ali in his heydey. The
'rope-a-dope' style of detection. Within the first hundred pages you
get a full murder mystery, solved with improbable but perfect logic by
the Continental Op (whether modern police methodology would allow a
private eye to walk all over procedure these days the way he did is a
matter of societal and cultural changes); then follows the aftermath,
two more murder mysteries involving the poor 'cursed' Dain girl, all tied together
by the overriding plot involving a superbly rendered villain, with excellent
provision of clues. The economy and complexity of this process is inspiring,
everything that needs to be said is said or presented, there's no
nonsense or unnecessary diversion. Characterization? Bah! Enough is
presented to make the people live, even poor old Leggett, the French
escapee from Devil's Island who has made a new career in San Francisco
as a research chemist, but is all too soon a murder victim. Gabrielle,
the morphine junkie with the elfin, foxlike face, who thinks she is cursed,
is a marvellous character.
A comment on customs: As we all know, sex, drug addiction, passion,
and greed have existed throughout human history. That they are not
presented graphically in this book is a matter of the editorial policy
of the time -- any adult reader can fill in between the lines. What is
more interesting for people with an interest in such things is the
'periodicity', for example, the Op having to take a ferry from San
Francisco to Berkeley because the Bay Bridge hadn't been built then
(let alone BART). Prohibition was in full swing and the casual flouting
of the law taken for granted. This adds appeal in the way the Philo Vance
books do for New York. Then of course there is always the behavior of the cops,
and also what would be considered blatant racism these days -- Civil
Libertarians would have a fit now. I know some NYC cops, and their
attitudes are really no different from what they would have been in
the 1920s; it's just the procedures and the way of expressing opinions
that have changed.
Appearance: The Continental Op is the anonymous precursor to Bill Pronzini's
Nameless Detective. But little things leak out. Did you know, for
example, that he was only five-feet-six tall, but weighed in at 190
lbs.? Somehow one's first impression is that he's the Incredible Hulk, the way
he comes across (but doesn't behave, always being very polite), but he is
actually a generic version of George Smiley or Father Brown. Lorre, not Bogart.
This was intentional on Hammett's part, I think, before Sam Spade. He was just
trying to represent a 'real' detective of the Pinkerton sort, not Sherlock. I
have never met a private detective, but in reality they probably
resemble bank clerks. Seedy, but not excessively so, plodding but not
jerks by any means. Inconspicuous, but capable of displaying power
when needed. This would fit the times -- likely nowadays a PI would
more resemble a computer nerd with goggle glasses and a dirty T-shirt.
(Apart from the boss of the agency, of course, who would dress like a
professional basketball coach to impress the customers. The Op's 'Old Man' is like that, always concerned about full reporting and not running over budget.)
"The Maltese Falcon" (1930).
Hammett's most famous detective is Sam Spade, who appears only in this novel and three rather trivial short stories produced on demand from his publishers. This mystery became John Huston's classic movie with Bogart, Lorre, Greenstreet, et al., and lifted dialogue intact from this book -- that's how vividly written it is. One of the early but hardly surpassed (if ever) hard-boiled detective stories. The mood of this masterpiece puts it right up there with the best of the 'noirs' (cf. Ambler and Thompson). [It can be fun to point to later movies like 'Chinatown', 'Bladerunner', and yes, 'Batman', that sort of capture a similar mood.] Like all Hammett books, it is short (some 200 pages), but its terse and economical style contains enough detail for a much longer novel. It is crammed with details and events. Hence the movie necessarily crops a lot out of the sub-plots and other incidentals. Most scenes hold up remarkably intact in spirit, including word-for-word reproduction of the dialogue. And Sam Spade, described as a 'blond Satan', built like an Easter Island statue and defined by the letter V as to his facial features, is not Bogart, quite -- he is also somewhat sleazy, not just hard-boiled but venal. He also hand-rolls his cigarettes, which like pipe-tamping adds a casual deliberation to scenes, insouciance that cannot be conveyed as well by somebody just taking one out of a pack. Lorre, of course, was perfect as Joel Cairo, and Greenstreet as Casper 'By-Gad-Sir' Gutman (though in the book Cairo is more blatantly homosexual and Gutman far more grossly fat, defined by 'jouncing bulbs' as Hammett puts it). Sex is something that was of course downplayed in the movie because of the time it was made, but the book makes it clear (though not in as much explicit detail as would be written now) that Spade slept with Brigid and that he had an adulterous relationship with his partner's wife Iva -- that sub-plot mostly glossed over in the film although it makes more explicable the reason why the cops are on Spade's case so vehemently.
Also eliminated, or cut back, were the amusing scenes involving Spade and his lawyer, Sid Wise ("Just one more client like you and I'd be in a sanitarium -- or San Quentin." / "You'd be with most of your clients..."). A fine scene where Spade is called in to the DA's office, where the latter is trying to make a connection between murder victim Thursby's involvement with a missing gambling mobster and Spade's client -- a traditional mystery red herring not even mentioned in the movie. (Spade's whole ethic throughout is to protect the privacy of his clients from meddling law folk, a theme that is basic to the book.) Gutman's drugged daughter. The affectionate relationship with his pip of a secretary Effie Perine. Spade's burglary of Brigid's apartment. Spade's relations and friendships as a professional private eye with the like of hotel dicks and other aides and informers and his cop friend Polhaus -- he is no Lone Ranger. The full and fascinating history of the Falcon itself. Above all, the 'parable' Spade narrates to Brigid about Mr. Flitcraft (pointed out by Steven Marcus in his introduction to The Continental Op), a man who abandoned his prosperous and humdrum career and his family after nearly being killed by a falling piece of construction work while walking to lunch, having an epiphany that life is a crap-shoot and subject to randomness, so do as thou wilt, then in another place established an almost identical life-style as somebody else: "He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling." This defines Spade's existential attitude and explains, in a sense, his basically honorable final action, a kind of return to normalcy, to what standards he has at base.
As a mystery plot, i.e., involving detection, this book is not in the Golden Age of Detection vein, more like pure pulp thriller, because nearly everybody in it is basically treacherous, including the hero; there's that wonderful scene toward the end where Spade and Gutman deliberate on who to shop for the murders, the palming of a thousand-dollar bill, the gyrations of treachery worthy of the old Romans or the Borgias
-- one of the most cynical and dramatic endings in all detective fiction. The wise-cracking style later improved on by Chandler et al. became part of the genre after Hammett, such as this minor but typical example where Cairo comments: "You have always, I must say, a smooth explanation ready" and Spade replies "What do you want me to do? Learn to stutter?" A throwaway exchange with the driver of a borrowed car: "Your partner got knocked off, didn't he, Mr. Spade?" / "Uh-huh." / "She's a tough racket. You can have it for mine." / "Well, hack-drivers don't live forever." / "Maybe that's right," the thick man conceded, "but, just the same, it'll always be a surprise to me if I don't." Certainly at a higher level than the gangsterese popular at the time. Note too that Hammett has the gunsel Wilmer utter "two words, the first a short gutteral verb, the second 'you'" -- even Black Mask drew the line in those days.
"The Glass Key" (1933).
Ned Beaumont is the hero of this grim novel; he is the Fixer (nowadays he'd probably be called an Expediter) for a corrupt political boss, Paul Madvig. (Does that name remind you of Ludwig of Bavaria? Probably no coincidence.) While the main story is a murder mystery (who killed the Senator's son?), the episodes concern the ambitions, hatreds, rivalries, cowardice, and spite of the various opponents, lackeys, and women connected with Madvig -- especially the gangster Shad O'Rory, Madvig's political rival. Ned Beaumont plays a central role in each sub-plot, behaving in a very ambiguous way, making it hard for the reader to determine what he is really up to until it happens. This is Hammett's intent, of course, showing the onion-skin complexity of human behavior, and the fact that good is often achieved by evil intentions and vice versa. We are never allowed to know what any character is thinking at the time, just what he/she does or says (often acting 'out of character' in the way that is normally shown in a book). The first episode, setting the scene, is an elaborate scheme set up by Beaumont to recover $3250 he had won on a horse from a bookie who fled town as one of the murder suspects (it is important to be aware that Beaumont only extracts that amount of money and doesn't otherwise rip the guy off); this is a funny side-dish that leaves a nasty aftertaste. The other episodes involve poison-pen letters, torture, frame-ups, blackmail, betrayal, you name it, until everything gets wrapped up, perhaps too neatly, with the obligatory surprise ending. Note that the author always refers to the hero as Ned Beaumont fully spelled out ('Ned Beaumont entered the room', 'Ned Beaumont said', etc.), which he only occasionally does with the other characters, who are referred to, with the usual convention, as Doolan, Jack, Janet, etc.; possibly this is done to distance the reader, a warning not to become sympathetic with the protagonist or regard him as a normal human being one can think of as Ned or Beau. Beaumont is a strange person, and this is Hammett's darkest novel.
A comment by Barry Ergang of the Golden Age of Detection News Group:
In case you are curious about the title, it derives from a dream the 'heroine' Janet Henry narrates to Ned Beaumont, in which they were together in the woods, Hansel and Gretel or Goldilocks fashion, lost and starving. They find a locked cabin and spot a table laid out with food through the window, and finding a key under the doormat they open the door only to find the floor crawling with poisonous snakes and quickly relock the door.... At the end of the book she finally admits, "In that dream -- I didn't tell you -- the key was glass and shattered in our hands just as we got the door open..."/ He looked sidewise at her and asked: "Well?"/ She shivered. "We couldn't lock the snakes in and they came out all over us and I woke up screaming." This sort of metaphorical dream sequence is something Hammett used fairly frequently (as in "The Dain Curse") and it works quite effectively without being overwhelmingly 'literary'.
"The Thin Man" (1934).
This book will convince you that Nick and Nora Charles are confirmed alcoholics. At least the Schnauzer Asta stays sober (unlike the St Bernard in "Topper"). Nick keeps denying that he has any detectival interest in the case, that he has given up being a detective and prefers to live off his wife's fortune, and one begins to wonder if he will ever get around to doing anything about the crime. There is, finally, a traditional detective story ending (easily deduced by the reader, though not by the drunken Nick Charles until almost too late). The dialogue is good and breezy, of course, and one can see why the Powell/Loy movies caught on. Most Golden Age fans probably know that the Thin Man is not Nick Charles but rather the prime murder suspect. It was Hammett's last novel; apparently he had burned out as a serious writer, although he went on to work on movie scripts in Hollywood and help out Lillian Hellman with her plays.
"The Big Knockover" (7 stories) -- [I don't have this book at present]
As I recall, this includes the "Gutting of Coufingal," a true classic of violence in which an entire island, an exclusive enclave of the rich, is raided by an armed gang of thieves, led by emigres of the Russian Revolution who have ensconced themselves within the populace.
"Nightmare Town" (20 stories) -- Continental Op (7), Sam Spade (3), an early version of "The Thin Man" (without Nick Charles), and miscellaneous crime stories --
The lead story is a classic involving a whole town that is a fake run by gangsters, where EVERYBODY is an accomplice, and killings just for the hell of it or for fake insurance cash-ins occur at a mad pace (the fertilizer factory that is this desert town's only economic base is actually a hooch manufactury), an ultimate story for paranoids (and 12-year-old boys), better in a more simplified way than Red Harvest; starring a world adventurer who bumbles into the place in a great drunk scene, not the C.O., and with more gratuitous murders than even in the novel mentioned -- the whole place is burned up at the end killing supposedly everybody, and only the hero and the heroine (a telegraph clerk) escape -- an Armageddon Rag.
View this link to Classic Mysteries for more about Hammett's stories. Several of the early pulp stories, including some Continental Ops, can be downloaded as E-books from Blackmask.
* Hammett suffered from lung disease, mainly TB, all his life, off and on, so it is surprising he lived as long as he did; he also smoked and drank to excess, maybe took drugs like morphine too. So what? What was done to him in later life by the government is appalling -- not that he complained about it to the press. Because of his membership in the Communist Party at one time, and he only went into this area because of the abominable situation he saw in modern society, the Depression, persecution of labor unions, Prohibition with its inevitable crime and corruption involving politicians. He was a spendthrift of the amiable sort, so when he made money he spent it. After he got blacklisted after the McCarthy hearings, actually spent some time in jail for refusing to testify, the IRS went after him for back taxes and garnisheed all of the royalties for his books, and he died in poverty (but not on the streets, since his friends did their best to prevent that). Yet as a US Army vet for both World Wars, he was granted burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Go figure!