Fly Paper and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Later Years, Volume 3

The Continental Op

by Dashiell Hammett

Whether chasing debutants or gunning down killers, the legendary Continental Op doesn’t miss a beat, in this collection of short stories from master of noir fiction Dashiell Hammett

From the day she was born, Sue Hambleton has wanted to tell her family to go to hell. Bred to be a debutante, Sue’s more at home in the back alleys of the Bowery than the ballrooms of Fifth Avenue. When she’s finally old enough, she bolts, shacking up with a series of machine-gun artists, killers, and thieves in a debauched spree that takes her across the country and out of her family’s shadow. But when she finally surfaces in San Francisco, she becomes the Continental Op’s problem—the deadliest problem he will ever have.
 
Years of working as a private investigator gave Dashiell Hammett unique insight into life at the edge of the underworld. In “Fly Paper,” “The Farewell Murder,” and “Death and Company,” this pioneer of the hardboiled is shown at his very best.

Genres: Short Stories, Mystery

130 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 14, 2016

About the author

Also wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett

Dashiell Hammett, an American, wrote highly acclaimed detective fiction, including The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934).

Samuel Dashiell Hammett authored hardboiled novels and short stories. He created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) among the enduring characters. In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in the New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell...

Reviews

[Florin Pitea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice reading. Recommended.

[Peter G · Rating 3 out of 5]

And so, at last, I come to the end of this series of Continental Op stories and have to reckon with what I think of Hammett as a short story writer. It's funny, but the man who supposedly "gave murder back to the kind of people who commit it for reasons" sure seemed to rely on a lot of the same cliched plot devices of the grand old dames he is often compared favourable to. Otherwise, this is a writer at his peak, I suppose. By the time these stories were written, his style was the style of the novels - which is to say neat, clean, sparse, and wearing a weight of significance on his every mean word. His description is not rushed, but doesn't go for any extra detail, and its clinical eye enhances the horror of, say, three corpses forced into a closet or, in this book, an eviscerated dog left as a warning. His dialogue is delightfully fun too, as it was in his earliest works. It's just his plotting that drag these stories down really - Hammett's characters seem at his best just sort of larking around in fraught situations. Which happens often enough in his novels, but these short stories don't seem to have the space to play around in. Some authors just find their pace within works of a certain length. Red Harvest, The Glass Key, and The Maltese Falcon are masterpieces. Read those and read these only if you remain curious about how Hammett ended up there.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Fill in this space with usual Hammett review--it's all good!)

[Thomas Tyrer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another strong entry from Hammett to finish off the Continental Op stories.