The Giant Collection of the Continental Op

<b>Essential tales from the files of San Francisco’s hard-bitten, prototypical PI—penned by the undisputed “master of the detective novel” (<i>The Boston Globe</i>).</b><br>  <br> Before Dashiell Hammett introduced such iconic sleuths as Sam Spade in <i>The Maltese Falcon</i> or Nick and Nora Charles in <i>The Thin Man</i>, he put to work the most influential detective ever to scour America’s hard-boiled literary landscape. An operative of San Francisco’s Continental Detective Agency, the Continental Op was a world-weary, pragmatic, and inelegant company man—and though always nameless, he has remained as distinctive as a fingerprint.<br>  <br> Informed by Hammett’s own work with the Pinkertons, the twenty-three stories collected here—originally published between 1923 and 1930—introduced a bracing, jaded, dry-witted realism to the genre. Written with “the precision of a diamond cutter,” they are seminal masterworks in the legacy of a genuine original (<i>Newsweek</i>).