Dashiell Hammett was a crime writer who elevated the genre to true literature, and The Thin Man was Hammett's last-and most successful-novel. Following the enormous success of "The Thin Man" movie in 1934, Hammett was commis...

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman...

Dashiell Hammett is best known as both pioneer and master of American hard-boiled detective fiction, but these dozen and a half stories both affirm that reputation and present him in a different light. Along with the full-length scree...