CRIME MASTERWORKS

3 primary works • 7 total works

The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

Published June 1966

Ned Beaumont is a tall, thin, moustache-wearing, TB-ridden, drinking, gambling, hanger-on to the political boss of a corrupt Eastern city. Nevertheless, like every Hammett hero (and like Hammett himself), he has an unbreakable, if idiosyncratic moral code. Ned's boss wants to better himself with a thoroughbred senator's daughter; but does he want it badly enough to commit murder? If he's innocent, who wants him in the frame? Beaumont must find out.

Dain Curse

by Dashiell Hammett

Published 28 February 1974

Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the hardboiled crime novel, and his creation the Continental Op is a short, squat, and utterly unsentimental tank of a private detective. Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young, wealthy, and a devotee of morphine and religious cults. She has an unfortunate effect on the people around her: they have a habit of dying violently. Is Gabrielle the victim of a family curse? Or is the truth about her weirder and infinitely more dangerous? The Dain Curse is one of the Continental Op's most bizarre cases, and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.

The Continental Op

by Dashiell Hammett and Steven Marcus

Published 12 September 1975

Short, thick-bodied, mulishly stubborn, and indifferent to pain, Dashiell Hammett's Continetal Op was the prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. In these stories the Op unravels a murder with too many clues, looks for a girl with eyes the color of shadows on polished silver, and tangles with a crooked-eared gunman called the Whosis Kid.

Red Harvest (Abandoned)

by Dashiell Hammett

Published 1 June 2003

The Maltese Falcon

by Dashiell Hammett

Published 28 February 1974

A coolly glittering gem of detective fiction that has haunted three generations of readers, from one of the greatest mystery writers of all time.

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's iconic, influential, and beloved The Maltese Falcon.

Red Harvest

by Dashiell Hammett

Published 28 February 1974

Detective-story master Dashiell Hammett gives us yet another unforgettable read in Red Harvest: When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.

The Big Knockover

by Dashiell Hammett

Published 17 July 1989

Dashiell Hammett first wrote about the Continental Op, the short, fat, balding detective with no home, no name and no personal existence apart from his work, more than eighty years ago. In doing so he created one of the most enduring icons of modern times - the private eye, the isolated hero in a treacherous and brutal world. The Continental Op stories are among Hammett's finest and most colourful writing.