

In scores of stories written for Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, Dashiell Hammett used the vernacular adventure tale to register the jarring textures and revved-up cadences of modern America. His stories opened up crime fiction to the realities of American streets and American speech. Now The Library of America collects the finest of them: 24 in all, along with some revealing essays and an early version of his novel The Thin Man. The texts, reprinted here for the first time, are those that appeared originally in the pulps, without the cuts and revisions introduced by later editors.Hammett's years of experience as a Pinkerton detective give even his most outlandishly plotted mysteries a gritty credibility. Mixing melodramatic panache and poker-faced comedy, his stories are hard-edged entertainment for an era of headlong change and extravagant violence, tracking the devious, nearly nihilistic exploits of con men and blackmailers, slumming socialites and deadpan assassins. As guide through this underworld he created the Continental Op, the nameless and deliberately unheroic detective separated from the brutality and corruption around him only by his professionalism.
Book 1

Book 2

Book 2.1

Book 2.2

Book 2.3

Book 2.4

Book 2.5

Shelve Blood Money

Shelve Corkscrew and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Middle Years, Volume 3

Shelve Creeping Siamese and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Later Years, Volume 1

Shelve Fly Paper and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Later Years, Volume 3

Shelve It and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Early Years, Volume 2

Shelve The Big Book of the Continental Op

Shelve The Creeping Siamese

Shelve The Giant Collection of the Continental Op

Shelve The Golden Horseshoe and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Middle Years, Volume 1

Shelve The Main Death and This King Business: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Later Years, Volume 2

Shelve Who Killed Bob Teal? and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Middle Years, Volume 2

Shelve Arson Plus - a Continental Op Short Story - #1

Shelve Corkscrew - a Continental Op Short Story - #18

Shelve Crooked Souls - a Continental Op Short Story - #2

Shelve Dead Yellow Women - a Continental Op Short Story - #19

Shelve Death and Company - a Continental Op Short Story

Shelve It - a Continental Op Short Story - #4

Shelve Mike or Alec or Rufus - a Continental Op Short Story - #15

Shelve Night Shots - a Continental Op Short Story - #7

Shelve One Hour - a Continental Op Short Story - #9

Shelve Slippery Fingers - a Continental Op Short Story - #3

Shelve The Farewell Murder - a Continental Op Short Story

Shelve The Girl with the Silver Eyes: A Tale of the Continental Op - a Continental Op Short Story

Shelve The Golden Horseshoe - a Continental Op Short Story - #13

Shelve The House in Turk Street - a Continental Op Short Story - #10

Shelve The Main Death - a Continental Op Short Story

Shelve The Scorched Face - a Continental Op Short Story - #17

Shelve The Tenth Clew - a Continental Op Short Story - #6

Shelve The Whosis Kid - a Continental Op Short Story - #16

Shelve This King Business - a Continental Op Short Story

Shelve Three Dimes - a Continental Op Short Story

Shelve Who Killed Bob Teal? - a Continental Op Short Story - #14

Shelve Women, Politics & Murder - a Continental Op Short Story - #12

Shelve Zigzags of Treachery - a Continental Op Short Story - #8

Nothing here
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