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(1894 - 1961)
Dashiell (Samuel) Hammett was born in St. Mary's County. He grew up in Philadelphia and
Baltimore. Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs
thereafter---messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, operator, and stevedore, finally becoming an operative for
Pinkerton's Detective Agency. Sleuthing suited young Hammett, but World War I intervened, interrupting
his work and injuring his health. When sergeant Hammett was discharged from the last of several
hospitals, he resumed detective work. He soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920's Hammett became
the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. In The Maltese Falcon (1930) he
first introduced his famous private eye, Sam Spade. The Thin Man (1932) offered another immortal
sleuth, Nick Charles. Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Glass Key
(1931) are among his most successful novels. During World War II, Hammett again served as
sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians.
Hammett's later life was marked in part by ill health, alcoholism, a period of imprisonment related to his
alleged membership in the Communist Party, and by his long-time companion, the author Lillian Hellman,
with whom he had a very volatile relationship. His attempt at autobiographical fiction survives in the story
"Tulip," which is contained in the posthumous collection The Big Knockover (1966, edited by Lillian
Hellman). Another volume of his stories, The Continental Op (1974, edited by Stephen Marcus),
introduced the final Hammett character: the "Op," a nameless detective (or "operative") who displays
little of his personality, making him a classic tough guy in the hard-boiled mold---a bit like Hammett
himself.
Dashiell Hammett titles available
from Vintage Crime/Black Lizard:
