Corkscrew - a Continental Op Short Story - #18

The Continental Op

by Dashiell Hammett

Doesn't our sleuth from the Continental Detective Agency get into strange situations! It appeared in Black Mask in September 1925.

Here the Op is posing as a Deputy Sheriff in the cowboy town of Corkscrew in rural Arizona. Actually he has been appointed to the position for this occasion because the nearby police department was short staffed. He's there representing a land development company wishing to lease out farmland and they would like to reign in the lawlessness in Corkscrew. Get set for a version of the 19th century's wild west holding on into the 1920s. Your challenge will be to keep track of the body count.

Librarian's note #1: this entry is for the story, Corkscrew. 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.

Genres: Mystery

32 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1925

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. A story quite different from many other Continental Op episodes. Unexpected. Most of the eighteen I've read so far have been set in San Francisco. This one takes place in a hot and dusty cowboy town, lawless to the core, in rural Arizona just north of the Mexican border. Called Corkscrew after the nearby valley. Black Mask carried it in 1925, and I read the 32 pages in The Big Book of the Continental Op of 2017. It's a western! Could Zane Grey have been the co-author? Early on, readers are left with the impression that the Op is no longer working for Continental, that he's employed as a Deputy Sheriff. Here's a warning; don't read this one if (a), you have difficulty with high body counts, (b), you get completely turned off by upsetting encounters with antisemitism and racism, or (c), you think a Deputy Sheriff, even one holding the post part-time, should operate within the law. And one more, you shouldn't open page one if you can easily lose track of so many short cowboy names. Like I did! Does the Op do his job for the land development company which hired him? I'll only note that, by the end, it seems like most of the lawless characters are dead. (Fe2021/Jun2026)

[Tojuan Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

its so interesting seeing Opie in a rural setting.

[John Cates]

A western, compete with cowboys, ranches, saloons & gun fights - but set in Arizona on the border in the 1920's - with unexpected references to drug use and illegal immigration - we haven't come that far.