The Dain Curse (Vintage Crime) - Softcover

Hammett, Dashiell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679722602 ISBN 13: 9780679722601

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1989

Synopsis

One of the Continental Op's most bizarre cases, as he is faced with Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett, who has an unfortunate effect on the people around her - they have a habit of dying violently.

About this title

Book Description:

'Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best' THE TIMES

About the Author:

Dashiell Samuel Hammett was born in St. Mary's County, Maryland. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs thereafter--messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, operator, and stevedore, finally becoming an operative for Pinkerton's Detective Agency. Sleuthing suited young Hammett, but World War I intervened, interrupting his work and injuring his health. When Sergeant Hammett was discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work. He soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920s Hammett became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. In The Maltese Falcon (1930) he first introduced his famous private eye, Sam Spade. The Thin Man (1932) offered another immortal sleuth, Nick Charles. Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most successful novels. During World War II, Hammett again served as sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians. Hammett's later life was marked in part by ill health, alcoholism, a period of imprisonment related to his alleged membership in the Communist Party, and by his long-time companion, the author Lillian Hellman, with whom he had a very volatile relationship. His attempt at autobiographical fiction survives in the story "Tulip," which is contained in the posthumous collection The Big Knockover (1966, edited by Lillian Hellman). Another volume of his stories, The Continental Op (1974, edited by Stephen Marcus), introduced the final Hammett character: the "Op," a nameless detective (or "operative") who displays little of his personality, making him a classic tough guy in the hard-boiled mold--a bit like Hammett himself.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0679722602
• ISBN 13: 9780679722601
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240