Miss Gabriel Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die - violently. Is she the victim of a family curse? The short, squat, utterly unsentimental Continental Op, the best private detective[...]

This volume collects the novel "e;The Maltese Falcon"e; and 10 short stories by Dashiell Hammett: "e;Too Many Have Lived,"e; "e;They Can Only Hang You Once,"e; "e;A Man Called Spade,"e; "e;Afraid of a Gun,"e; "e;The Assistant Murderer,"e; "e;House [...]

Dashiell Hammett changed the face of crime fiction. In five novels published over five years as well as a string of stories, he transformed the mystery genre into literature and left us with the figure of the hard-boiled detective, from the Continental Op to Sam Spade--immortalized on film by Humphr[...]

Although characters and stories like Sam Spade and The Maltese Falcon are famous the world over, Dashiel Hammett wrote only five full-length novels in his career. Now two new stories have been discovered in his papers. Following the enormous success of 'The Thin Man' movie in 1934, Hammett wrote two[...]

Hammett's 1930 detective novel is widely regarded as the first and finest novel of the hard-boiled private detective. Sam Spade has a cold detachment, keen eye for detail and an unflinching determination to achieve his own justice. Regarded by many as the greatest crime novel of the 20th century, it[...]