 Dashiell
Hammett, the Father in the PI Holy Trinity, was born Samuel Dashiell Hammett in Maryland
in 1894, the second of three children. He quit school when he was 13 and held a variety of
jobs until he began working for the Pinkerton Agency in 1915. He ended up working for the
Pinks in San Francisco during his 20s. After volunteering for a stint in the Army as an
ambulance driver in WWI, he contracted tuberculosis. When mustered out, his ill-health
kept him from resuming his career as a Pink. He began writing as a means of support and
had his first story – loosely based on his detective experiences – published in
1922 in "The Smart Set."The realism of his stories – where crimes took place and were solved in gritty real-life circumstances, not in English country manor drawing rooms – made him a perfect writer for "Black Mask," a pulp magazine published H.L. Menken to provide cash for his tonier "Smart Set." Pop Quiz: Without Googling, name three authors who became famous from their work in "Smart Set." Time's up. Thought so. Hammett's first publication in "Black Mask" was "Arson Plus." The unnamed detective for the Continental Detective Agency – a roman á cléf Pinkerton Agency – was simply referred to as the Op. Full-length outings for the Op were Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. In The Maltese Falcon, Hammett chose a new protagonist, Sam Spade. Spade's partner, who was killed early in the novel, was Miles Archer. If that last name sounds familiar, ask Kenneth Millar. A year after The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key was published. In my opinion, the latter was not written as well as The Maltese Falcon. I find it stiff and stilted with more archaic language than Falcon. For me, it reads like an earlier, not-as-polished work. Perhaps it was written after Falcon, or perhaps it was something in "the trunk" that Hammett had written earlier and was able to sell to his publisher after the success of The Maltese Falcon. In his mid-30s, Hammett began the downward spiral after moving to Hollywood. In 1934, The Thin Man was published, chronicling Nick and Nora Charles. It was his last novel. Booze, womanizing, and the Yoko Ono-like influence of Lillian Hellman took their toll. Hammett left fiction and spent the rest of his time writing leftist political filler. He re-enlisted in the Army during WWII and served in the Aleutians and was honorably discharged after three years of service. He taught writing in New York at a Marxist institute after that and provided bail for a group of US communists who were on trial during the McCarthy era. When they jumped bail – nothing like standing up for your beliefs – Hammett was sent to prison for five months for not revealing the other bail posters. I hope the ones who jumped had a wonderful life and died with maggots in their bellies. Once afoul of the Feds, the IRS made Hammett's remaining years a happy-candy-fun-time. I guess that's the "Service" part of Internal Revenue Service. Of course, if Hammett had paid more attention to his financial matters and less to whiskey, women, and Bolsheviks, he might have skated. The moral? Pay your taxes and don't get your sleeve caught in the gears of the federal government. Hammett's death was the result of a heart attack in 1955 in New York City.
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Sure, that's Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing, but he's about as close as you'll come to an embodyment of the Continental Operative described by Hammett in such novels as "Red Harvest" and "The Dain Curse." |
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| Other Works | |
 The Glass Key© 1931
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 Lost
Stories1922 The Barber and His Wife The Parthian Shot The Great Lovers Immortality The Road Home 1923 The Master Mind The Sardonic Star of Tom Doody The Joke on Eloise Morey Holiday The Crusader The Green Elephant The Dimple Laughing Masks 1924 Itchy Esther Entertains 1925 Another Perfect Crime Ben-Bulu 1926 - 1930 The Advertising Man Writes a Love Letter 1930 - 1941 Night Shade This Little Pig The Thin Man add the Flack
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