The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) began writing short fiction in 1922, and in a maniacally fertile period between 1929 and 1934 penned five hard-boiled novels, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man among them, that would become standards in American crime fiction. Inspired by Hammett's experiences over nearly a decade as a detective, the stories exposed the raw nerve of America's growing criminal enterprise and whetted the reading public's appetite for crime novels, introducing such iconic characters as the Continental Op, Sam Spade, and Nick Charles, and devising an unfamiliar crime lexicon that would be imitated (but never surpassed) in following decades. Biographer Ward (Dark Harbor) asserts, "If anything taught Hammett to write pithily and with appreciation for the language of street characters it was…his scores of operative reports for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency." However, Hammett's life was far from the romantic ideal of a best-selling author. Tubercular and alcoholic, Hammett—alongside his longtime partner, the dramatist Lillian Hellman—struggled to reignite the spark of creativity that characterized his early career. A sixth novel would never come to fruition.