Birth of the Hard-Boiled

If you were a noir fan who found The Big Book of the Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) under your 2017 holiday tree, consider yourself blessed.  If not, you owe it to yourself to buy it now, because this collection, lovingly assembled and edited by Julie Rivett (Hammett’s granddaughter) and Richard Layman (the leading Hammett scholar) is a treat from cover to cover as it opens a window onto a world and style of detective fiction now mostly gone.

All the Op stories first appeared in the legendary pulp magazine The Black Mask,starting with “Arson Plus” in the October 1923 issue and ending with “Death and Company” in November 1930, the year of The Maltese Falcon.

Now, for the first time, all twenty-eight tales featuring Hammett’s pioneering creation have been joined in one volume. The bulk of them were collected in three earlier editions, one of them edited by Hammett’s companion, playwright Lillian Hellman. Others remained scattered in far-flung corners, in addition to a couple of uncompleted stories and early versions of Hammett’s first two novels that have not seen print since their first magazine publication in the late 1920s. They too, have been all wrapped up in one bulky but worthwhile package. At 700 double-column pages, it’s one hot brick of a book.

Before the Op, there was no one in detective fiction quite like him. Literary detectives were creatures of the upper class or from officialdom and were mostly of British origin. The Op, a descendant of dime-novel frontier sheriffs and gunfighters, was American to his cold marrow. By the 1920s, the American frontier was long gone, and World War I had brought a bloody end to old ways. Rural populations were on the cusp of becoming a minority as giant cities sprung up from coast to coast. Prohibition kicked in, in part, as a reaction against these changes. These dry laws, however, ignited a fantastic era of corruption and lawlessness. Genre fiction readers needed a new hero for this violent and tempestuous time.

The Op was among the first and by far the best of the new breed. He rose from the ranks of the unwashed to take a place in a relatively new American institution—the corporation as fronted by the Continental Detective Agency. Like the Pinkertons, Hammett’s former employers on whom it’s based, the agency represents the wealthy and the powerful, extracting them from their own unique troubles.

The Op is smart, but no genius like Sherlock Holmes, smoking his pipe, shooting cocaine while slumped in his armchair. He does his thinking on his feet, in the moment. He’s a dogged fellow who takes a stoutly cynical anti-romantic stance toward the world and his work. Homely as an old suitcase, he’s like a mechanic, fearlessly getting his hands dirty—the kind who’ll steal the crutches off a crippled newsboy to get the job done. Hammett seems to have built him from brick, concrete and steel, adding only enough human qualities to help him function as a detective, an oblique symbol of his times and, finally, as the gnarly root of every tough-guy hero since then.

Because professional detectives prefer to remain safe in anonymity, we never learn the Op’s real name in these first-person fables. He seems to have no private life save for sleeping, eating, smoking and the occasional poker game. He falls in love once—or, more precisely, becomes obsessed—but it passes like a bad flu. He’s as single-minded as a hunting dog.

Today’s high-strung readers will feel tweaked by his callous pragmatism and disdain for most human feelings. (His closest modern equal can be found in the Donald Westlake/Richard Stark novels, following the terrifying hard-boiled adventures of a cold-eyed professional thief.) He’s in it for the work and the money it brings the company. His social attitudes occasionally slip into racism and his black humor still shocks. (“I haven’t laughed so hard since the hogs ate my kid brother!” he cackles near the end of Red Harvest, the first Hammett masterpiece novel.)

While Hammett’s leftist politics are the stuff of legend, he wrote the Op stories while he was still in his twenties, his attitudes still unformed. The Op is a creature of the establishment, freely cooperating (as real detectives do) with the police—who are often portrayed as being as able as he is, though sometimes also corrupt.

Whatever the political undercurrents, these are first and foremost true noir pulp tales: raw, energetic, ungainly. These stories dazzle and delight, burst with invention and energy, gleam with nuggets of color and fun. Many of them are novellas, long, elaborate action-packed tales, full of shoot-outs, stabbings and even homicide by typewriter. Even when they careen toward the implausible, they compel attention with vivid prose, breakneck pacing and Hammett’s fierce eye for surface detail and the local color of 1920s San Francisco. 

The collection divides the Op stories into three sections, mirroring the three Black Mask editors for whom Hammett wrote: George W. Sutton, Philip C. Cody and Joseph Shaw. Each editor made his own demands of the magazine’s star author. Hammett, an invalid recovering from tuberculosis, poor and with a family to support, chafed under their demands, but he was in no position to rebel.

Nevertheless, he made the most of the fences surrounding him. His background as a Pinkerton detective provided enormous amounts of exact detail, painting a realistic patina over his fantastic plots. Hammett is sometimes called a “realistic” writer, which I think is a profound mistake: His stories and plots are too incredible, as baroque and strung with wild coincidence as any 19^th-century melodrama. 

Take “The Gutting of Couffignal”: It opens with the Op reading M.P. Shiels’ fantasy The Lord of the Seawhile standing midnight guard duty over a pile of expensive wedding gifts.After summing up the plot, he admits, “it sounds dizzy here, but in the book it was as real as a dime.” It’s clearly a tip off that we should take Hammett’s work here in a similar vein as we’re spun off into an equally dizzy romp about a Russian criminal gang overrunning an entire island. And it reads as real as a dime.

The Op stories are really works of fantasy and deserve to be seen as such. (Sergio Leone’s movies, indirectly inspired by Hammett’s work, play a similar game, laying gritty details over equally dubious scenarios.) This is not criticism but praise. The Op stories work a pulpy magic, seducing readers into a baroque world of skullduggery and revenge, where the unreal becomes real.

Hammett was a self-educated writer, broadly read and it shows. His style, especially in his early stories, is awkward, sometimes heavy with slang (all of which is defined in footnotes). Nevertheless, he writes with such energy, flamboyance and humor, with such a deft eye for detail, objections dissolve like mist.

Not every story hits its target. The early ones show a young writer finding his feet before hitting his stride in the middle years under Cody and Shaw. From this period came most of the best Op stories, including four which, when read together, constitute two separate novellas: “The House on Turk Street” and “The Girl with the Silver Eyes”; and “The Big Knockover” and “$106,000 Blood Money.”

 “This King Business,” a late novella, sweeps the Op away to the fictional Middle European nation of Muravia for a wild satire of out of both John Buchan and Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King.” It crackles with arch and witty commentary on politics but drags toward the end.

As an encore, the volume includes Hammett’s first two novels, Red Harvestand The Dain Curse, as they first appeared in The Black Maskbefore their hardcover publication by Alfred Knopf, where they underwent significant red-penciling.  The Dain Curse seems to be an even bigger jumble than it was in its final version. The Black Mask Red Harvest is also significantly different, yet in some ways better, as it clips along to a more cogent ending. For Hammett fans, they are fascinating documents.

Then came Sam Spade in The Maltese Falconin 1930. Hammett left the Continental Op behind, the string played out. Both his style and themes would crystallize in the great works to come. Nonetheless, some readers may feel a sad twinge when The Big Book of the Continental Opreaches the end. I know I did.

Thomas Burchfield’s Butchertown,a ripping, 1920s gangster shoot-‘em-up  novel is now out. His contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Arkwon the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book Festival awards for horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original screenplays Whackers, The Uglies, Now Speaks the Deviland Dracula: Endless Night(e-book editions only). Published by Ambler House Publishing, all are available at Amazon,Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, and other retailers. His reviews have appeared in Bright Lights Film Journaland The Strand and he recently published a two-part look at the life and career of the great film villain (and spaghetti western star) Lee Van Cleef in Filmfax. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.

Film Noir Fest X: Hammett's Day

Elizabeth and I managed to cross the Bay this last Sunday to attend a segment of the last day of Noir City Film Fest (or Noir Fest X), the annual noir film festival, produced and hosted by the one-and-only King of Noir, Eddie Muller, accompanied by the mellifluous burr of Bill Arney, and all under the decorative vaulted ceilings of the legendary Castro Theatre.

Noir Fest started the year I left San Francisco for East Bay and I somehow never made it over to attend, but this year, with my own 1920s noirish novel Butchertown in the pipe, I decided attending would be an entertaining, helpful and inspiring duty.

This was especially pertinent as the last day was dedicated to three double features of films based on the work of noir’s Ür-author Dashiell Hammett, whose Red Harvest  I count as one of the greatest novels I’ve ever read.

The day opened with two rarities, both of which we passed on: Roadhouse Nights, an alleged adaptation of Harvest that is said to depart so greatly from the novel as to be both unrecognizable and not very good, despite being penned by Hollywood’s great Golden Age screenwriter, Ben Hecht.

The other was the first version of The Maltese Falcon (1931), whose static and stiff presentation—typical of many early sound films—I’d suffered through once already at the Roxie some years back. Aside from silvery swaths of lingerie draped suggestively all over this pre-Code production, I recall it being pretty much Snooze City, with Ricardo Cortez’s Sam Spade making Humphrey Bogart look even more like Humphrey Bogart.

The second double feature—the one we caught--consisted of a couple of other true rarities, based on stories that Hammett wrote specifically for the movies (though he never got to write the screenplays).

In 1930, according to Vince Emery’s book Lost Stories, Hammett, sailing fast and high on the success of The Maltese Falcon, sold a story called “After School” to Paramount Pictures. Later it was retitled “The Kiss-Off.” Later it became . . .

City Streets (1931), a gangland romance beautifully directed by Rouben Mamoulian with gorgeous cinematography by Lee Garmes. It’s a boy-meets-girl story with Sylvia Sidney as a gangster’s daughter who takes a shine to an aw-shucks sideshow sharpshooter, played by young and handsome Gary Cooper (who so reminded me of Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, I’m calling for a re-do of Morocco).

Things get a little silly when Coop joins the mob and trades his cowboy duds and drawl for derbies, fur-lined coat, and a tough guy sneer out the side of his mouth. The ending also lands a little fuzzily, leaning on a mild humorous reversal instead of a tense, bang-up climax we might expect. Still, Sidney is excellent and the movie also features oily unctuous Paul Lukas and genial Guy Kibbee. It’s definitely worth fixing your eyes on.

The second feature was an obscure low-budgeter titled Mister Dynamite, released by Universal Studios in 1935—so obscure, that Eddie Muller ruefully admitted to the audience he hadn’t seen it yet either and said the Universal Studios vault was amazed that anyone would even ask for it.

As told by co-presenter, publisher Vince Emery, Mister Dynamite started as a nail-tough, hard-boiled Sam Spade-style screenstory called “On the Make,” commissioned from Hammett by Warner Bothers producer Darryl Zanuck, who subsequenty turned it down.

Some years later, with his name bubbling in lights again thanks to The Thin Man novel and film, Hammett pulled “On the Make” from the trunk and took it to Universal who said yes . . . BUT—that ever-looming Hollywood BUT--they wanted something soft-boiled, namely another Thin Man (thus has Hollywood always been, boys and girls). They paid Hammett, sent him on his way, and brought in two screenwriters, Doris Malloy and a comedy writer named Harry Clork  (nope, not a typo) to write them up their Thin Man copy.

As the curtain rose and the name “Harry Clork” rang in my ears, I whispered to Elizabeth, “I fear this will be painful.”

But, wouldn’t ya know it . . . I was wet! Not all wet, but pretty damp. Sure, it was a thin paste-up of The Thin Man but Mister Dynamite turned to be a surprisingly entertaining and bubbly charmer thanks to its sparkling string of wisecracks and peppery rapport between Edmund Lowe, as the Sam Spadish/Nick Charles-ish hero, Thomas N. Thompson (“T.N.T.” nudge-nudge) and Jean Dixon, a wonderful stage actress (and Sarah Bernhardt protégé), as Lowe’s long-suffering but always on-her-game secretary.

Despite the movie’s low-budget production and C-supporting cast, cheery applause clattered to ceiling as the curtain fell at the end of this crowd-pleasing pip. In its humble fashion, it was the surprise of the day.

As for the mysterious Harry Clork, IMDB claims he was also the writer of such classics as Tea for Two and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki. Glad I didn’t know that going in.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.

Up in Sam Spade's Room

Bill Arney still remembers that day, watching the building manager’s key slide into the lock, seeing the door open into a narrow hallway, and then that hard left into apartment 401.


Bill couldn’t believe his luck at being here in this very top corner room, overlooking the siren-haunted Tenderloin jungle on Post Street in San Francisco. It was in this 275-foot square studio that Dashiell Hammett, one of genre fiction’s trailblazers, lived from 1927 to 1929 and wrote three of his masterpieces: Red Harvest¸ The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon.

Sixty-four years later, on a day in 1993, it became Bill Arney’s home.

Of Hammett’s novels of crime and intrigue, it's the Falcon that has a direct link to apartment 401. With some re-jiggering, Hammett re-imagined his own place as private eye Sam Spade’s digs, the claustrophobic set for the final confrontation between the gang of murdering schemers and gamy dreamers who await the treasure they believe (except for knowing cynical Spade) will mark the triumphant end of their quest.

When I first saw it in 1994 during one of Don Herron’s Dashiell Hammett tours, shortly after meeting Bill at one of the many parties celebrating all things Hammett at John’s Grill (where I also met Hammett’s surviving daughter, Jo Hammett), I was nonplussed at its smallness. It was far short of the quasi-palatial spread Spade occupies in the John Huston-Humphrey Bogart 1941 film version.




Bill told me the story of how he found this obscure but essential corner of San Francisco literary history via e-mail and during a couple of the informal farewell cocktail parties he’s been holding there during July:

“I came to San Francisco from Illinois with a one-way plane ticket, two suitcases, and one job interview. I was staying with an old college friend in Menlo Park for the first months. I got that job and began work in September of 1981.

“That winter of '81–'82 was very rainy. So, I was typically seen on the city streets in a fedora and trench coat. A friend at work introduced me to Dashiell Hammett's writing, and I began reading his short stories. In the summer of 1982, I discovered the Dashiell Hammett Walking Tour, conducted by Don Herron. One of the stops on the tour was the corner of Post and Hyde Streets, where Don pointed to apartment 401 at 891 Post as the place where Hammett had written his breakthrough work, The Maltese Falcon.

“Eleven years later, in November of 1993, I was breaking up with a long-time girlfriend. I needed a new place to live—fast. One evening I was coming down Hyde Street in a taxi, and I recognized 891 Post Street from the walking tour. There was a ‘For Rent’ sign on the building. I made the cabbie pull over so I could write down the phone number. Apartment 401 was the first unit showed me by the building manager. I took it for $525 per month. I was there for Hammett's 100th birthday on May 27, 1994. In his honor, I woke up hung over that morning.

“It wasn’t until that next summer that I found Don Herron again. He was across the street with another of his batch of tourists. I ran down to join the group and told Don that, if he was there again the following week, I would have #401 cleaned up for his tourists to visit. I've been hosting Don’s tour groups ever since.”



When Hammett moved here, the building was still fairly new. “I have a copy of the building plans,” Bill says. “The drawings are dated 1917, so the building must have been erected in that year or shortly thereafter.”

To Hammett, who returned only a few times to San Francisco once he departed in late 1929, apartment 401 may have been only been another of the many places he lived in San Francisco, but in the world of literary mystery, the place he lived in and re-imagined is a something of a sacred space (though not to its landlords).

Little is thought to have changed since Hammett moved out eighty years ago, according to Bill: “As far as I know, the only remodeling was done in the kitchen: new cabinets, stove, refrigerator, and counter. Everything else was just paint. Also, the west windows were originally like the north. The entire set on the west for the whole building eventually rotted out from the afternoon sun and were replaced with aluminum sliders. The old spots for the original window hardware are still visible.”

Bill’s years as caretaker of this site may be drawing to a close. Thanks to this crumbling economy, he’s been laid off from his architecture job and with few immediate prospects on the horizon, the day may come soon when he’ll walk out the door of 401 and lock it behind him for good; another of those pieces of the past that makes the present worth living may be lost.

He was originally set to leave at the end of July (off to the rural life in San Rafael with wife Laurel), but a generous neighbor covered an extra month’s rent. Still, while Bill (and others) are mulling over schemes for keeping the apartment intact, he’s not optimistic:

“When I leave the place, the building management will no doubt do what they do to every vacant unit: They’ll paint all the woodwork I’ve stripped over the years. Worse still, they’ll remove the Murphy bed, the Murphy bed door, the original toilet, and the original claw-footed bath tub. All these they’ll throw in the trash. I’ve made some unanswered inquiries with San Francisco officials, hoping to protect the unit with some kind of landmark status, but it never came to anything. The rent will jump from the current, rent-controlled rate of $680, to at least $1,500, based upon my observations of other vacant unit pricing in the building.

“It’s been a golden era in my life. Most of Hammett's surviving family members have visited the place over the years, and I count them as friends. It was designated a Literary Landmark, complete with plaque, by the Friends of Libraries, USA, in 2005. I try to be happy that it happened, rather than sad it's over. None of it would ever have happened but for Don Herron's Dashiell Hammett Walking Tour. Don is a great tour guide and a dear friend. There are not enough guys like him in the world.”