In 1942, he was accepted and assigned as the editor of a camp newspaper at Adak, Aleutian Islands. Army in 1941 despite his recurring tuberculosis and his age. In 1936, his drinking led to hospitalization. He then tried his hand at Hollywood script writing with an adaptation of 'The Thin Man.' He eventually was involved in writing another handful of scripts, including 'Woman in the Dark' (1934), 'The Glass Key' (1935), and 'Satan Meets a Lady' (1936), but his heavy drinking and profligate spending earned him a reputation for undependability. 'The Glass Key' was published in 1931, followed by 'The Thin Man' in 1932. Longer stories appeared in 1927, as well as a first novella, 'The Big Knockover.' His first novel, 'Red Harvest' appeared in early 1929, quickly followed by 'The Dain Curse' in 1929, and 'The Maltese Falcon' in early 1930, which made his reputation as a writer. 'The Black Mask' published 'Crooked Souls,' 'It,' 'The Second-Story Angel,' and 'Bodies Piled Up' in 1923, and 'The Tenth Clew,' which introduced the Continental Op, the following year before a tuberculosis flare up curtailed his output. Initially, he used the pen name Peter Collinson before settling on the profession name of Dashiell Hammett. He published his first short story, 'The Parthian Shot,' in 1922 in the magazine, 'The Smart Set.' It was followed in 1923 by 'Arson Plus' in 'The Black Mask' for which he became a regular contributor. He moved to San Francisco, California and worked as a book reviewer and advertising copy-writer. Within a year, he had left the agency in disgust over their strike breaking tactics. In 1920, he left Maryland for the west coast, and reacquired a position with Pinkerton, working part time. He was never deployed, however, spending his service hospitalized for tuberculosis. Army, and trained as an ambulance driver. After working a series of jobs including: freight clerk, railroad yardman, messenger boy, day laborer and stevedore, he took a position with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency working as an on call operative from 1915 to 1918 when he joined the U.S. His family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then Baltimore where he attended school until dropping out by age 14. Mary's County, Maryland, the son of Anne Bond Dashiell and Richard Hammett Sr. Born Samuel Dashiell Hammett in Great Mills, St. Also included are revealing essays & an early version of the novel The Thin Man.Author. In the most comprehensive collection of his stories ever published, read the Hammett you've never read: reprinted here for the first time are the texts that originally appeared in the 1920's & 1930's pulps, without the cuts & revisions introduced by later editors. By connecting crime fiction to the realities of American streets and American speech, his Black Mask stories opened up new vistas for generations of writers and readers. The deliberately unheroic Op is separated only by his code of professionalism from the brutality and corruption that run rampant in stories such as "Zigzags of Treachery," "Dead Yellow Women," "Fly Paper," and "106,000 Blood Money." Hammett's years of experience as a Pinkerton detective give even his most outlandishly plotted mysteries a gritty credibility, and his intimate knowledge of San Francisco made him the perfect chronicler of that city's waterfronts, back alleys, police stations, and luxury hotels. As a guide through this underworld he created the Continental Op, the nameless, laconic detective, world-weary and unblinking, who serves as protagonist of most of these stories. For the heroic sagas of earlier eras Hammett substituted the up-tempo, devious, sometimes nearly nihilistic exploits of con men and blackmailers, fake spiritualists and thieving politicians, slumming socialites and deadpan assassins. Mixing melodramatic panache and poker-faced comedy, a sensitivity to place and a perceptive grasp of social conflict, Hammett's stories are hard-edged entertainments for an era of headlong change and extravagant violence. In this volume, The Library of America collects the finest of these stories: 24 in all, along with some revealing essays and an earlier version of his novel The Thin Man. Dashiell Hammett took the detective story and turned it into a medium for capturing the jarring textures and revved-up cadences of modern American life. In the stories and novellas he wrote for Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s.
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