Hammett: Complete Novels: Complete Novels

In a few years of extraordinary creative energy, Dashiell Hammett invented the modern American crime novel. In the words of Raymond Chandler, “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse. . . . He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Beginning as a prolific contributor to the pulp magazines of the 1920s, he succeeded during his brief ca…