The Continental Op
On sale
12th April 2012
Price: £10.99
Genre
‘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.
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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Reviews
Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best
Seven brilliant short stories based on the author's experience as a detective
He is master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer
Great crime fiction started with Hammett
Seven brilliant short stories based on the author's experience as a detective
He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used
The first fully "hard-boiled" hero in American letters
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
Hammett's prose is clean and entirely unique. His characters are as sharp and economically defined as any in American literature