The Big Book of the Continental Op

I prefer Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, that modest, faceless everyman, to the more well-known Sam Spade.Spade is not a particularly nice guy, on the other hand the Op's first person voice is like that of an old friend's. The Op is a Roaring Twenties lawman who breaks heads and takes names as well as turning a blind eye to Prohibition, as eager to go into a speakeasy as the next man. It's worth mentioning there's a lot more Continental Op material than there is about Spade too, about six times as much. Fully two thirds of Hammett's crime fiction starred our man from the Continental Detective Agency instead of falcon statuettes, glass keys and thin men.Ten stories featuring the Op were omitted from Hammett's superb Crime Stories And Other Writings making it incomplete. THE BIG BOOK OF THE CONTINENTAL OP rights that wrong by containing every Continental Op story the Dasher wrote, including one unfinished one! This is distinguished, authoritative writing too, so gritty it might've been written on sandpaper. The novels Red Harvest & The Dain Curse initially consisted of four Op novelettes apiece. I personally have never seen any of those eight segments published home or abroad in their original standalone form, and I've looked. Those eight stories are included in their original form here, verbatim from the pages of Black Mask, a brand name you can trust. The elusive 'It' & 'Death and Company' round out this complete collection.With the exception of 'This King Business' all 36 stories first appeared in Black Mask, the most feted extinct pulp magazine this side of the equally defunct Weird Tales. The Maltese Falcon also debuted in the Mask's pages before Knopf brought it out in hardcover; they'd already published Harvest & Dain. The fabulous and unobtrusive annotations in THE BIG BOOK OF THE CONTINENTAL OP reveal that Knopf mercilessly edited every paragraph Hammett wrote. Purchasers of this book will not only own Hammett's authentic versions of his two Op novels, but finally have authentic versions of the tales found in The Big Knockover & The Continental Op paperbacks, tinkered with by Lillian Hellman.If you're reading this you probably appreciate the exploits of the Op, a true pioneer of hardboiled American private dicks, but not the first. Carroll John Daly's 'Three Gun Terry' sneaked onto Black Mask's table of contents months ahead of the Op. Terry Mack is Daly's pilot fish for his enormously popular Race Williams character, a homicidal maniac who rationalizes his shooting sprees as private detecting. In his lifetime Daly enjoyed more glory in Black Mask than Hammett, hard as that is to believe. In the long run the Hammett legacy enjoys more success and respect; this is not to say Daly's writing sucks, it often makes for entertaining lightweight reading, but it's all hat and no cattle. The Op's romps in the Mask are steeped in a realism still resonant and relevant.To this day Hammett's influence on mystery novelists remains immense, justifying the mythic proportions of his literary reputation. His strengths as a storyteller and prose stylist as well as his background with Pinkerton's enabled his work to endure. On a side note, Lillian Hellman claimed Hammett didn't work for the agency for as long as he often alluded to. His own publisher Knopf hailed him as better than Hemingway, a conceit, of course, but one I happen to agree with. Give me Hammett's drunken private eyes and femme fatales over Hemingway's drunken sportsmen and forlorn expatriates any day of the week.

While it is wonderful to have all of the Continental Op stories finally collected together, the book itself is extremely disappointing. The paper is newspaper-thin and just as weak; mass market paperback has better and heavier quality. The text is laid out in a hard-to-read double-column format that pains the eyes. It's like the publisher decided to squeeze every dollar from the printing, no matter how unreadable it made the end result. Such a historic work deserves better treatment, and so do its readers.

This is a terrific collection of Dashiell Hammett stories - all the classics plus lesser-known but still excellent tales. No one else could write lines like this:"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte." (the opening of "Red Harvest").I also love the Op when he takes on mob mentality:"I hate mobs, lynchings - they sicken me. No matter how wrong the man is, if a mob is against him, I'm for him. The only thing I ever pray to God for is the chance some day to squat down behind a machine gun with a lynch mob in front of me."(from "This King Business").Hammett's detective fiction is among the very best. This collection guarantees lots of enjoyable reading.One minor complaint - the compilers of Hammett's work felt obligated to put asterisks next to all the colloquial/semi-obscure phrases and slang of the time, with footnotes at the bottom of most pages to explain what they meant. Educational, but ultimately too distracting (I mostly gave up on checking them because it interfered with the flow of the story).

In the genre of detective/noir/crime fiction, the one name that stands out head and shoulders above the others is Dashiell Hammett. Hammett is famous for his gumshoe heroes such as Sam Spade and Nick Charles, but before any of them made the scene, there were the adventures of a short, pudgy detective with no name, but simply referred to as the Continental Op. This large doorstopper of a volume, edited by publishing director Richard Layman, and Hammett’s granddaughter, Julie M. Rivett collects the complete stories of the Continental Op in the order they were released for the “Black Mask” detective pulp fiction magazine in the ’20s and ’30s. In the stories within, the Op solves murders, is thrown into the middle of political intrigue, goes up against gangsters, murderers, and corrupt political bosses, and navigates the shadowy mean streets of 1920s San Francisco. The stories are divided up into different management eras from Black Mask magazine, “The Sutton Years,” “The Cody Years” and “The Shaw Years,” with the Sutton Years being the most sedate and at times bordering on cozy mysteries, and The Shaw Years being the most intense and violent. The Cody and Shaw Years are personally my favorite eras, with the story of “The Scorched Face” being my favorite tale in the entire volume. Also included are the serialized, unedited versions of Hammett’s two Continental Op novels, “The Cleansing of Poisonville,” and “The Dain Curse.” as they originally appeared in Black Mask magazine. Personally, I prefer “The Cleansing of Poisonville out of the two as it’s full of action and intrigue and I considered “The Dain Curse” to be rather lackluster and disappointing for my tastes. Reading the stories within made me wonder why Hammett didn’t branch out into other genres of writing as my favorite tale in this volume, “The Scorched Face” could have very well been turned into a weird tale/horror story with the right supernatural elements, and “This King Business” reads almost like a proto-Tom Clancy political thriller. The stories I enjoyed and their synopses are as follows:“Arson Plus”- When an inventor’s house goes up in flames, the Continental Op must track down and bring to justice the party(s) responsible.“It”- A tough businessman’s associate goes missing under mysterious circumstances.“Bodies Piled Up”- The Op finds himself in the middle of a deadly firefight between two gangsters at an Italian restaurant while searching for clues to solve a multiple homicide.“Zigzags of Treachery”- The Op sets out on a mission to clear the name of the second wife of a well-to-do doctor, who has been framed for his murder.“The House on Turk Street”- While searching for an assault perpetrator, the Op happens upon a very sticky situation.“Women, Politics, and Murder”- The Op investigates the killing of a corrupt city politician.“The Golden Horseshoe”- A woman’s drug and booze-addicted husband goes missing, and it is up to the Op to find him.“The Whosis Kid”- The Op pursues a particularly deadly and dangerous criminal.“The Scorched Face”- When the Op tries to locate a client’s missing daughters, he unearths more than he hoped to bargain for.“Dead Yellow Women”- The Op uncovers a heated conflict of the international kind while trying to solve the case of a client’s missing and dead servants.“The Big Knock-Over”- A veritable army of gangsters terrorizes two city banks, and the Op is once again on the case.“$106,000 Blood Money”- The Op helps spearhead the hunt for the mastermind behind the robbery of the two banks.“This King Business”- The Op is thrown into an international game of deadly political intrigue in post-WWI Europe with a youth who aspires to be king.“Fly Paper”- Intriguing clues and events unfold when the Op works to track down a killer.“The Cleansing of Poisonville”- The Op gets down, dirty, and mean as hell in order to mop up a city full of political corruption. In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and look forward to reading Hammett’s other works. He truly was a brilliant author of detective fiction and all the praises of him are thoroughly justified. I give “The Big Book of the Continental Op” by Dashiell Hammett a 4 out of 5.

It’s great to have all these stories collected together, in some cases for the first time in almost a century.The stories are grouped, by editor, into three sections and having them like this allows you to more clearly follow Hammett, and the Op’s, evolution over the stories.As well as informative intros at the start of each section many of the stories also include notes by the author.As for the format, the text is printed in two columns per page which initially seemed a little odd but I feel actually meant I read through some of the stories at a far faster pace which suits them. The paper quality is arguably not the highest, but it also added to the feel of reading pulp stories.

Excellent book with a vast collection of Continental Op tales. A lot of reviewers have mentioned the two columns for all the stories but it was not an issue for me (a bit like the original pulps). Some good additional material also included with the book. Glad I purchased it.

If you like your private detective hard boiled, then this is for you.Possibly the original "man with no name", Dashiell Hammett's work should not disappoint the reader who likes this genre.

Excellent

Half-way through this wonderful book, and enjoying it so much. Highly recommended.