"Dashiell Hammett is the founder of the hard-boiled school of crime writing, a uniquely American genre that was expanded by Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and others. Hammett began his career writing brief humorous or satirical sketches for the Smart Set and other periodicals. In December 1922 he first appeared in Black Mask, which later became the flagship magazine of the hard-boiled school. Hammett himself worked with the Pinkertons, a private investigation agency that served as the basis for his Continental Detective Agency. Most of his tales are set in San Francisco, and his unnamed "Continental Op" is a riveting figure as he engages in both ratiocination and gunplay to ferret out criminals. This edition is the first to present textually accurate versions of all Hammett’s short stories, based on consultation of original magazine appearances"--Page 4 of cover.
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