Recommended reading - The Big Knockover and Other Stories

The Big Knockover and Other Stories

by Dashiell Hammett.

 

Published by Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Published 1981.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0140029419

ISBN-13: 978-0140029413

Description:

Nine short stories. Includes the unfinished novel, Tulip, and a memoir by Lillian Hellman. Short, thick-bodied, mulishly stubborn, and indifferent to physical pain, Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op was the prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. He is also the hero of most of the nine stories in this volume. The Op's one enthusiasm is doing his job, and in The Big Knockover the jobs entail taking on a gang of modern-day freebooters, a vice-ridden hell's acre in the Arizona desert, and the bank job to end all bank jobs, along with such assorted grifters as Babe McCloor, Bluepoint Vance, Alphabet Shorty McCoy, and the Dis-and-Dat Kid.

Recommended reading - The Maltese Falcon

 

The Maltese Falcon

by Dashiell Hammett.

Introduction by Richard Russo.

First published 1930.
Published by Vintage Crime / Black Lizard.
Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679722645
ISBN-13: 978-0679722649

Description:
“Hammett … wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” – Raymond Chandler.
Detective Sam Spade is a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. When his partner is killed during a stakeout, he is drawn into the hunt for a fantastic treasure with a dubious provenance – a golden bird encrusted with jewels. Also on the trail are a perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, an oversized adventurer named Gutman, and Spade’s new client Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime.
These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted generations of readers.
“Hammett’s prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.” – The New York Times.

On this day in movie history - The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Maltese Falcon

directed and written by John Huston,

based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett,

was released in the United States on October 18, 1941.

Music by Adolph Deutsch.

 .

Cast:

Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, Barton MacLane, Lee Patrick, Sydney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, Jerome Cowan, Elisha Cook Jr., James Burke, Murray Alper, John Hamilton, Walter Huston.

Recommended reading - A Man Called Spade

A Man Called Spade

A Man Called Spade

by Dashiell Hammett.

 

Published by Dell.

First Edition.

Paperback.

First published 1944.

 

ASIN: B000JWUE5A

 

Description:

Collection of short stories by this master writer of the Sam Spade detective series. Introduction by Ellery Queen. Dell Mapback #90. Sam Spade is featured in five short stories. The original hard-boiled American detective is featured in this vintage mapback edition. 

Recommended reading - The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories (1944)

 

The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories (1944).

By Dashiell Hammett.

 

Published by Must Have Books.

Paperback.

 

ISBN-10: 1773237772

ISBN-13: 978-1773237770

 

Description:

Sam Spade is the tall, tough, smart private detective made famous by Dashiell Hammett in his superb detective novel, The Maltese Falcon. His appearance in the three short stories which make up The Adventures of Sam Spade is good news for his admirers and even better news for those who have yet to meet him. As Sam says, “There ought to be a law making criminals give themselves up…” but since there isn’t one is better qualified than he to take the place of that law. He’s not a fictional detective, not given to elaborate analysis of the crime nor to elaborate restaging of it in front of all the suspects in the hope that one will break down; he’s an honest-to-God detective, astute and industrious enough to find out everything possible and then figure the angles from what he knows.

In addition to the three Adventures of Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett has included here four brilliant short stories, each one terse, masculine, and eminently readable, yet one different in theme and handling. The Assistant Murderer tells of a complicated case neatly solved by Alexander Rush, the detective who is so ugly that people just naturally think he is crooked. Night Shade is a vivid sketch with an O. Henry Ending. The Judge Laughed Last is a story so funny that you’ll be laughing even when the judge is through. And His Brother’s Keeper is a fine prize fight tale told by a tough, dumb, honest and likable fighter.

Contents: Too Many Have Lived; They Can Only Hang You Once; A Man Called Spade; The Assistant Murderer; Night Shade; The Judge Laughed Last; His Brother's Keeper.

Recommended reading - The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (1996)

 

The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (1996).

Hardboiled writing from Dashiell Hammett, Donald E. Westlake, Mickey Spillane, John D. MacDonald, Jim Thompson and many more…Edited by Maxim Jakubowski.

Mammoth Books.
 
ISBN-10: 0786703008
ISBN-13: 978-0786703005
 
Back cover description:
 
Fast action and wild, wild pleasure: a massive collection of seven decades of pure, unadulterated pulp fiction.

The paper may have yellowed and crumbled away but the stories and a thousand thrills still hit the spot. Join the shady operators, voluptuous molls, ruthless big shots, crooked and sometimes honest cops on a rollercoaster ride through the mean streets of popular literature in the company of such superlative writers as: Dashiell Hammett, Donald E. Westlake, Ross Macdonald, Charles Willeford, David Goodis, Frederic Brown, Robert Bloch, Karlan Ellison, John D. MacDonald, Jim Thompson, William P. McGivern, Lawrence Block, Bill Pronzini, Mickey Spillane.

And twenty other leading lights of the hardboiled school of writing, as the action moves back from the silver screen to the pages where it all began. Just watch out for open windows and flying bullets!

 

Contents:

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Too Many Have Lived, by Dashiell Hammett; Flight to Nowhere, by Charles Williams; Black, by Paul Cain; Finders Killers! by John D. MacDonald; Murder’s Mandate, by W. T. Ballard; Cigarette Girl, by James M. Cain; The Getaway, by Gil Brewer; Preview of Murder, by Robert Leslie Bellem; Forever After, by Jim Thompson; The Bloody Tide, by Day Keene; Death Comes Gift-Wrapped, by William P. McGivern; The Girl Behind the Hedge, by Mickey Spillane; Enter Scarface, by Armitage Trail; A Candle for the Bag Lady, by Lawrence Block; Black Pudding, by David Goodis; A Matter of Principal, by Max Allan Collins; Citizen’s Arrest, by Charles Willeford; Sleeping Dog, by Ross Macdonald; The Wench is Dead, by Fredric Brown; So Dark for April, by Howard Browne; We Are All Dead, by Bruno Fischer; Death is a Vampire, by Robert Bloch; Divide and Conquer, by Jack Ritchie; A Real Nice Guy, by William F. Nolan; Stacked Deck, by Bill Pronzini; So Young, So Fair, So Dead, by John Lutz; Effective Medicine, by B. Traven; Killing Bernstein, by Harlan Ellison; The Second Coming, by Joe Gores; Hibiscus and Homicide, by William Campbell Gault; Hell on Wheels, by Thomas S. Roche; Ordo, by Donald E. Westlake.

Born on this day – Dashiell Hammett:

Writer

May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961

Credits:

Books:

A Man Called Spade (1944); Books to Die For (2012); Breakdown and Other Thrillers (1968); City Sleuths and Tough Guys (1989); Creeping Siamese and Other Stories (1950); Creeps by Night (2020); Dashiell Hammett: A Retrospective Anthology (2004); Dashiell Hammett: Crime Stories and Other Writings (2001); Dead Yellow Woman (1947); Great Tales of Crime and Detection (1992); Hammett Homicides (1946); Lost Stories (2005); Murder Plus (1992); Nightmare Town and Other Stories (1950); Pulp Frictions: Hardboiled Stories (1996); Red Brain and Other Thrillers (1961); Red Harvest (1929); Return of the Thin Man (2012); San Francisco Noir 2 (2009); Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett: 1921-1960 (2002); Tales of Mystery (1986); The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories (1944); The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century (2000); The Big Knockover (1966); The Continental Op (1974); The Crime Wave (2007); The Dain Curse (1929); The Glass Key (1931); The Hunter (2013); The Hunter and Other Stories (2013); The Longman Anthology of Detective Fiction (2004); The Maltese Falcon (1930); The Oxford Book of Detective Stories (2000); The Thin Man (1934); They Can Only Hang You Once (1944); Vintage Hammett (2005); Woman In The Dark (1933).

Movies and television:

Monsieur Spade (2024); Cineficción Radio (2021); No Good Deed (2002); Fallen Angels (1995); Miller's Crossing (1990); Sam Spade jagt den Malteser Falken (1986); Bande (1986); When the Raven Flies (1984); The Wizard of Malta (1981); La ciudad maldita (1978); The Dain Curse (1978); The Last Round (1976); The Black Bird (1975); The Wide World of Mystery (1975); Maltézský sokol (1968); Der Steckbrief (1967); The Thin Man (1957–1959); Teledrama (1956–1959); The Fat Man (1951); Studio One (1949); Song of the Thin Man (1947); Secret Agent X-9 (1945); The Thin Man Goes Home (1944); Watch on the Rhine (1943); The Glass Key (1942); Shadow of the Thin Man (1941); The Maltese Falcon (1941); Another Thin Man (1939); Have You Got Any Castles? (1938); Secret Agent X-9 (1937); After the Thin Man (1936); Satan Met a Lady (1936); The Glass Key (1935); Mister Dynamite (1935); Woman in the Dark (1934); The Thin Man (1934); The Maltese Falcon (1931); City Streets (1931); Roadhouse Nights (1930).