Nightmare Town: Twenty long unavailable stories - Softcover

Hammett, Dashiell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 033048110X ISBN 13: 9780330481106

Publisher: Picador, 2002

Synopsis

Introduced by Colin Dexter, one of England’s greatest writers of detective fiction, here are twenty long-unavailable stories by Dashiell Hammett, the author of The Maltese Falcon and one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.

In the title story, a man on a bender enters a small town end ends up unravelling the dark mystery at its heart. A woman confronts the brutal truth about her husband in the chilling story `Ruffian’s Wife’. `His Brother’s Keeper’ is a half-wit boxer’s eulogy to the brother who betrayed him. `The Second-Story Angel’ recounts one of the most novel cons ever devised. In seven stories, the tough and taciturn Continental Op takes on a motley collection of the deceitful, the duped, and the dead, and once again shows his uncanny ability to get at the truth. In three stories, Sam Spade confronts the darkness in the human soul while rolling his own cigarettes. And the first study for The Thin Man sends John Guild on a murder investigation in which almost every witness may be lying.

In Nightmare Town, Dashiell Hammett, America’s poet laureate of the dispossessed, shows us a world where people confront a multitude of evils. Whether they are trying to right wrongs or just trying to survive, all of them are rendered with Hammett’s signature gifts for sharp-edge characters and blunt dialogue.

Hammett said that his ambition was to elevate mystery fiction to the level of art. This collection of masterful stories clearly illustrates Hammett’s success, and shows the remarkable range and variety of the fiction he produced.

About this title

About the Author

Samuel Dashiel Hammett was born on a farm in Maryland in 1896. He left school when he was 13 years old and held several jobs before working for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He was an operative for the Pinkertons from 1915 to February 1922, with time off to serve in World War I. When his first marriage failed, Hammett turned to alcohol before working in advertising and, eventually, writing. His work at the detective agency provided him the inspiration for his writings. Hammett wrote most of his detective fiction during the 1920s when he was living in San Francisco. In 1931 Hammett embarked on a 30-year affair with playwright Lillian Hellman. He wrote his final novel The Thin Man in 1934. Despite it being his most successful work to date, he gave up writing and devoted much of the rest of his life to left-wing activism. He was black-listed as a Communist in the 1950s and he gradually withdrew from public life, the effects of tobacco and alcohol having a detrimental effect on his health. He died of lung cancer in 1961.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 033048110X
• ISBN 13: 9780330481106
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 432