‘An acknowledged literary landmark’ [Robert Graves] from ‘The dean of the school of hard-boiled fiction’ [New York Times]
The Continental Op first heard Personville called Poisonville by Hickey Dewey. But since Dewey also called a shirt a shoit, he didn’t think anything of it. Until he went there and his client, the only honest man in Poisonville, was murdered. Then the Op decided to stay to punish the guilty. And that meant taking on the entire town…
The Continental Op first heard Personville called Poisonville by Hickey Dewey. But since Dewey also called a shirt a shoit, he didn’t think anything of it. Until he went there and his client, the only honest man in Poisonville, was murdered. Then the Op decided to stay to punish the guilty. And that meant taking on the entire town…
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Reviews
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
The dean of the school of hard-boiled fiction
...a literary classic dealing with corruption by one of the masters of crime fiction
One of the foremost practitioners of the hard-boiled detective story
He is master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer
He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used
Hammett's prose is clean and entirely unique. His characters are as sharp and economically defined as any in American literature
