Customer Reviews

Dashiell Hammett: Five Complete Novels: Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man

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This is a nice compact hardback edition of Dashiell Hammett's five novels, which he wrote between 1929 and 1934. A veteran of Pinkerton detective agency in several cities, Hammett turned his intimate familiarity with crooks, low-lives, and the seedier side of life into hard-boiled, hard-hitting detective stories. This was a time when urban corruption was the rule, and private detectives, journalists, and police officers shared information. Two of these novels, "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Glass Key" are American classics. Another, "The Thin Man", inspired one of Hollywood's best-loved movie franchises. Hammett's novels lift the veil of propriety from the subcultures in which they take place, laying bare violence, corruption, and pervasive cynicism. But they're not dreary. The sharp prose crackles, and the heroes stand apart from the corruption while swimming in it, steadfast in their own codes of conduct, their iconoclastic ideologies rooted securely in realism. These five novels all appeared as serials in magazines prior to being published as novels. "The Thin Man" appeared first in "Redbook", the others in "Black Mask".

"The Maltese Falcon" (1930) and "The Glass Key" (1931) are flawless. "The Maltese Falcon" features private detective Sam Spade, a irresistible femme fatale, and the ruthless pursuit of an ancient gold statuette. The last pages of the book are some of the most hard-hitting and cynical in all of noir fiction. And they're brilliant. "The Glass Key" explores political corruption that leads to personal tragedy in an unnamed American city. Oddly, the detective is the right-hand man of a crime boss. "Red Harvest" (1929) features the adventures of Hammett's most popular detective, the Continental Op, in a town called Personville, or Poisonville to those who know it better. The always unnamed detective for the Continental Detective Agency finds himself responsible for cleaning up a mining town that is ruled by violence and mob warfare. The novel's opening paragraph deserves to be read several times. "The Thin Man" (1934) is an attempt at humor among New York's blue-blooded, cold-blooded upper crust. Hard-boiled humor is interesting in concept. But I find the characters in this novel more pitiful than funny, and Hammett's style was in decline at this point. At least his characteristic cynicism wasn't. "The Dain Curse" (1929) is another Continental Op novel. This one is melodramatic, absurd, and not up to Hammett's usual standards. Hammett fans shouldn't miss it, but others may find it pointless. I described the novels in order of descending quality. "Complete Novels" organizes them chronologically.

Five novels is a lot to pack into one book. But "Complete Novels" doesn't resemble a door stop. It's a handy size actually. The print is not too small, but the pages are quite thin. Editor Stanley Marcus, a literary critic and frequent admirer of Hammett's work, has included a Chronology of Hammett's life and several pages of notes on the novels in the back of the book. The chronology is informative and provides all of the apparently significant events in Hammett's life. The notes are mostly definitions of colloquialisms used in the novels, which are useful. The notes also contain an introduction to "The Maltese Falcon", written by Hammett in 1934, in which he explains the origins of that novel's characters. It's quite interesting. For those who prefer to own these novels separately, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard hs published some handsome trade paperback editions. But if you want hardback and don't mind all five novels in one volume, this is quite a nice book.

He's known best for the creation of Sam Spade and the Maltese Falcon. But Dashiell Hammet was responsible for a lot more -- the hardboiled crime novel as we know it today, with femme fatales, charmingly sinister crooks and cynical antiheroes.

"Red Harvest" introduces the Continental Op, cool-as-a-cucumber private detective who arrives in Personvilles (often pronounced "Poisonville") for a client, Donald Wilson, who has been suddenly murdered. Soon the Continental Op finds himself being hired by Donald's father Elihu to clean up Personville. To do so, he'll have to fight fire with fire, and play dirty with the many dangerous crooks.

"The Dain Curse" starts off with an ordinary diamond heist where things don't seem quite right. It soon leads the Continental Op to Gabrielle Leggett, a young woman with a drug habit, an attachment to a cult, a bizarre family secret, and who is convinced in the "Dain Curse" that has supposedly slain her entire family. The Op sets out to discover the origins of the cult and cure Gabrielle of her drug use...

"The Maltese Falcon" starts with a simple case, in which a young woman asks the private investigators Sam Spade and Miles Archer to trail her sister's lover. Except not only does she not have a sister, but she's wrapped up in a bizarre hunt for the priceless, elusive Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade must unravel a tangle of lies and murder to find out who killed Miles, and what is going on with the Falcon.

"The Glass Key presents Ned Beaumont, a gambler-turned-murder-investigator who has to start investigating when a Senator's son is murdered. What he uncovers is more than murder, but deception, desperate political games, gangsters and money.

"The Thin Man" brings us Nick and Nora Charles, wealthy and dysfunctional New Yorkers who seem like unlikely detectives. When a friend reintroduces Nick to the family of eccentric genius Richard Wynant, they find a confusing web spun around Wynant (the Thin Man). His ex-wife has married a bitter rival, and his kids aren't being forthright. Who is the Thin Man, and what has he done?

Hammett's writing style is spare and to-the-point, but is shockingly vivid when it needs to be (such as the human sacrifice scene in "Dain Curse"). His leading men are hardened, cynical, and live by their own sense of justice, but surprisingly deep and human. The supporting characters are also good: sighing femme fatales, cultured obese gangsters, accursed damsels, charismatic cult leaders, frightened young girls, and corrupt politicians.

There's a certain amount of narrative awkwardness in some of the books; "Curse" reads like three novellas, and "Harvest" is virtually impossible to understand at first. Some of the books may need to be read multiple times to really absorb the story, so that their complexity and twisting storylines can be fully appreciated.

Only a handful of authors have managed to do what Dashiell Hammett did for the crime novel. His complete novels are a searing, twisting, deliciously noir read. Highly recommended.

Dashiell Hammett's novels have fascinating mystery plots and the essential elements of film noir: dangerous dames, wise-cracking "ops" (= operative = P.I.), cagey crime orgasnisers, and trigger-happy "muggs".

Hammett's novels include The Maltese Falcon (#3) and The Thin Man(#5), which are great films but they are missing some of the intrigue of the real stories. For instance, there's another angle of Sam Spade involving Iva Archer that doesn't quite make it to the film version . . . .

The Red Harvest (#1) reveals shocking corruption in city politics as the Continental Op (literally) wades through bootleg liquor and tries to keep track of the soaring body count.

The Dain Curse (#2) is a confusing compound of drug use, a religious cult, and a family's vicious criminal record. It isn't a neat, fictionalised detective story, but rather the slough of deceit Hammett must have seen while working for Pinkerton.

The Glass Key (#4) also deals with city-level political corruption, but there's another message: think of trying to use a glass key . . . .

When fortifying myself for a six hour layover and a trans-Atlantic flight, I stumbled upon this book quite by accident, but I couldn't have made a better choice. Hammett's novels make excellent reading: interesting plots, clever wording and some of those "lines" film noir can't do without. I can't resist giving an example "line" (from The Glass Key):

"'A copper found you crawling on all fours up the middle of Colman Street at three in the morning leaving a trail of blood behind you.'

'I think of funny things to do,' Ned Beaumont said."

I have reviewed each of these books separately. Having them all together in one volume is invaluable. And reading these consecutively is hardly boring, because there's a world of difference between them.

RED HARVEST featuring the Continental Op is a real romp through a completely corrupt town which gets what's coming to it because a corrupt police official makes the middle aged fat man protagonist mad. There's an underlying theme of corruption as a true poison.

THE DAIN CURSE is again the Continental Op, and here you see glimpses of a tender side to a character who is basically completely self controlled. And in this, you see the very weak female character turn into an admirably strong woman.

THE MALTESE FALCON is of course the true classic, a study of greed and deception. Sam Spade's story of a character named Flitcraft gives the reader the author's perspective on the randomness of life.

THE GLASS KEY gives a sleazy view of politics and makes a couple of points about friendship.

THE THIN MAN appears lightweight after the first four, but a second reading reveals a portrait of a very able person who allowed passion to leave his life, and is slowly going down the drain.

Crime fans will especially love this collection, but there is a whole lot of value concerning human nature and the framework of society here.

A beautiful edition of beautiful stories. The Library of America consistently produces elegant, useful and durable editions of some of America's best literary works. Hammett's novels add to the enjoyment: his crisp, "in-the-know" writing style is highly enjoyable -- and addictive. I urge everyone to try this edition, you'll enjoy it.

Wow. Finally the publishers are making what needs to be made more often.

Hammett reinvents the hard-boiled and hard-boiled is forever changed. With his tight yet elegant prose that recalls Hemingway, Hammett leads us head-first through a maze of corruption and murder with genius that is only matched later by Raymond Chandler. Hammett never trusts the reader, much to the reader's delight: the endings are stunning yet not fantastic (as was Poirot). The only reason for which you shouldn't read this book would be to give other authors a fighting chance on your bookshelf...

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of this book. If you're a Hammett fan, it's worth investing in. Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key and The Thin Man are gathered in this real cloth-bound book. The book stays open, flat. It even has a satin ribbon bound in to hold your place. It sounds a bit strange to gush over the bookmaking, but I think this volume is a worthy container for the classic content inside.

Hammett's main contribution to detective fiction was an incredibly paranoid atmosphere in which characters' allegiances seem to shift constantly. In classic detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, there is a world of murder and violence, but also another world of law and order. The detective protagonists are clearly on the side of justice; the police may be incompetent, but at least they mean well. But in Hammett, no one can ever be trusted, and you can't even be sure about the protagonist's motivation. Occasionally you get people who are decent sorts, but even then the protagonist still can't bring himself to trust them with any important information. In this way Hammett is very different from Chandler, who also describes a world full of corruption and deceit, but where you can at least always count on Philip Marlowe to do the right thing, regardless of how much whiskey he drinks.

Hammett's fascination with deceit often translates to awkward plotting. His first novel Red Harvest is primarily notable for the gleefully vicious, blood-thirsty way in which Hammett's protagonist, the Continental Op, sows deadly chaos among various thugs and gangsters. As a mystery, though, it is nigh unreadable. New characters are constantly being introduced and killed off. A guy named Lew Yard is first made out to be one of the most ruthless and important mobsters in the town, but never makes an on-screen appearance. Another gangster named Reno is suddenly introduced more than halfway through, and ends up being the focus of the closing scenes, where he is even praised by Hammett as an example of manliness, for reasons far beyond my grasp. Things appear to happen more or less arbitrarily. While this conveys the feeling of chaos, it stops making sense after a while.

The second novel, The Dain Curse, is even worse. The plot is a sequence of loosely connected and increasingly outlandish and improbable events (plus an increasingly grotesque body count) that are eventually tied together by a completely arbitrary resolution. The Op solves the case using a bizarre chain of reasoning that invents new details that had not been shown to the reader before. Chandler commented in "The Simple Art Of Murder" that a good detective story should outwit the reader without claiming an unfair advantage, and that is certainly relevant here.

Then, surprisingly, Hammett got a lot better. His third novel The Maltese Falcon is still fairly low on logic and deduction, so it feels more like a suspense/adventure story than a mystery, but Hammett's paranoid vision is a lot more coherent. The suspense revolves around the precarious way in which the canny Sam Spade manipulates a gang of dangerous criminals, mostly by bluffing rather than by force. It's no surprise that this story became a Hollywood classic -- Spade's particular brand of hard-drinking, trust-no-one machismo, delivering justice to the criminals without getting his own hands too dirty, was destined for the movies. The Continental Op may have been edgier as a concept, but unfortunately, Hammett handled him pretty ineptly.

The Glass Key is again more of a psychological drama than a mystery, although a murder does get solved in it. It reinvents Red Harvest's theme of sowing chaos among rival criminal factions. The protagonist is a shady gambler, a friend of one of the criminal bosses, and his own motivation is masterfully blurred throughout the story, but in the end he is shown to be more like Sam Spade in his adherence to a certain ethical code. The most memorable aspect of the story is the friendship between the protagonist and the boss Paul Madvig (who is deliberately shown as being a thug, but not a killer, probably to make him a bit more sympathetic). This friendship is subjected to great tribulations that are resolved with a very Hemingwayesque depiction of manly honour (and this time, it actually makes sense).

After all these not-quite-mysteries, Hammett's last novel The Thin Man is...a perfect detective story with an absolutely classical structure. Nick Charles is more in line with the charming, upstanding detectives of the past, and he gets an equally charming sidekick in the form of his witty wife Nora. The story is full of hilarious one-liners. The murder mystery is resolved with a single logical deduction that elegantly stands the story on its head. The identity of the killer is still a bit arbitrary, in my view, but the setup and resolution of the mystery is as perfect as it gets. This was another instant Hollywood classic, and for good reason -- not only is it very well-written and well-plotted, but unlike the tiresomely gloomy Red Harvest, it's a lot of fun. A lightweight assessment, sure, but hey, if you really have to read a murder story with deep existential meaning, try Crime And Punishment.

Basically, Hammett was a hack writer, but his hackery greatly improved as it went on, and he certainly went out on a high note. I think he's mainly valuable for his influence on Chandler, whose writing was better, though not as fascinatingly odd. If The Thin Man is any indication, Hammett might have attained Conan-Doyle-like stature if he had continued to write detective stories, but then again, if you look at "Tulip," it may have been better for him to quit when he did. Probably the best way to get acquainted with Hammett is to read The Glass Key, and then see The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man in their Hollywood form.

Hammett was the best writer ever to take to crime fiction. All his writing is lean and elegant.

The Dain Curse (his first novel) is not very good, but the other 4 are superb. The Maltese Falcon is even better than the Bogart film. Hammett's feeling for mood and atmosphere shows in that these books have inspired great movies: The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man series, Yojimbo (from Red Harvest).

Given the slew of 5-star reviews for this volume I don't have a lot to add to the discourse. However, I would say this, as I find it somewhat underrepresented: HAMMETT's NOVELS ARE FUN.

Along with all the other great facets of his writing, such as the political contexts and the foundations for the hard-boiled detective, the thing that grabs me about his writing is just how much of a rollicking good time it conveys. Red Harvest is great with its client vs. services rendered tension.

Another excellent example of the FUN of Hammett is The Thin Man's Nick-Nora main character relationship. There are just enough hints at consensual promiscuity and one can't help but smile at the subtle mysteries this marriage contains...

Once again, I focused on this aspect of the novels simply because everything else has already been said. This is a great collection, and reading it in the high-quality format of a LOA volume just adds to the experience.