Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Red Harvest (Everyman's Library)

Dashiell Hammett is one of the most memorable authors of detective fiction from the early 20th century. I'm sure I've said this before, but I LOVE Everyman's Library editions. I love the old editions and I love the new editions. I pretty much love the look and feel of any book printed by Everyman's Library. I bought this book because a) it's an Everyman's Library, and b) the first novel included is The Maltese Falcon. 

Humphrey Bogart fans will know that in 1941, he starred as private detective Sam Spade in the most well known film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon. As I read the novel, I couldn't shake the image of Bogart from my interpretation of Sam Spade. For readers who don't know the story, The Maltese Falcon is about a private detective who is drawn into a case involving a mysterious gold and jeweled falcon statuette after his partner is murdered. What surprised me the most about this novel was discovering that much of dialogue used in the 1941 film was pulled directly from the pages of the book. As the introduction to this edition notes, Hammett was known for his excellent dialogue. 

The Thin Man is also about a private detective, but in this case Nick Charles is retired. He, inadvertently, is drawn into a murder investigation after the secretary and former lover of an friend is found murdered and his friend--an inventor who cannot be found--is accused. I enjoyed this novel as much, if not more, than The Maltese Falcon. 

The final novel in this edition is Red Harvest, the bloody story of a city run by gangsters and crooked cops. The private detective, who never reveals his name, is given a $10 000 cheque to clean up the city of Personville, often called Poisonville by its residents. Poisonville is a mining town. The narrator explains--and he does a lot of explaining in this novel--that the mine-owner used thugs and crooked cops to crush organized labour and drive out the IWW. When the smoke cleared he'd lost his grip on the city. While I like the premise of this novel, I found it lacking credibility at times and a few of the characters seemed either like cardboard figures or seemed exaggerated. Red Harvest, while not bad, is the weakest of the three novels in this edition. 

These three novels were my introduction to Dashiell Hammett. A little searching online revealed that Hammett published two more novels and some short fiction. Although you can't tell from his writing, he was apparently a political activist with an interest in civil rights. He was a member of the Communist Party (USA), was blacklisted and was forced to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee, although they took no further action against him.