Women, Politics & Murder - a Continental Op Short Story - #12

The Continental Op

by Dashiell Hammett

Another of Hammett's great shorts which first came out in Black Mask. Here's how the crime magazine introduced it in 1924: "Mr. Hammett's San Francisco detective is on the job again, working on a mystery the solution of which is so simple that you'll be ashamed of yourself for not figuring it out. And take our word for it, you won't come within a thousand miles of the explanation - yet this is the most realistic and probable story in the issue."

The question is - who killed Mrs. Gilmore's husband?

Librarian's note #1: this entry is for the story, Women, Politics & Murder. Entries for collections of short stories and the other individual stories can be found elsewhere on Goodreads. There are a total of 28 short stories plus one incomplete; they can all be found by searching Goodreads for: a Continental Op Short Story.

Librarian's note #2: there are also two Continental Op novels, Red Harvest (also known as The Cleansing of Poisonville), and The Dain Curse.

16 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1924

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

[Jack Heath · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars. The police investigation of her husband's murder wasn't proceeding well as far as Mrs. Gilmore was concerned. Four days of no progress. Her instincts were right; SFPD's Detective Sergeant O'Gar, when asked by the Op, "I want the dope on the Gilmore killing," responds, "So do I." That's why she hired Continental. The 16-page short story is from Black Mask in 1924; I read it in The Big Book of the Continental Op published in 2017. In more than one of his cases, the unnamed agent bemoans the tendency of clients to leave out crucial information. This client does it twice! She didn't tell the police that Bernard Gilmore had a girlfriend, a Cara Kenbrook. And later, she admitted to the Op when caught out by a witness, that she had followed him that fateful night anticipating he was seeing Cara again. Her husband wasn't a saint in other ways too. He was a roads and bridges contractor for the city and the state. Politics in those days often meant late night meetings and brown-paper envelopes under the table for staff and politicians. Watch as the Op wades through the detritus and finds a simple answer to so many complexities. (De2020/Jun2026)