The Lost Detective

Before he made his name as perhaps the greatest American hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to writer and activist Lillian Hellman, his blacklisting during the McCarthy era and subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life fit for one of his stories. Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family, Hammett left school at fourteen and held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative from 1915 through 1922, witnessing both the drama...
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Before he made his name as perhaps the greatest American hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to writer and activist Lillian Hellman, his blacklisting during the McCarthy era and subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life fit for one of his stories. Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family, Hammett left school at fourteen and held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative from 1915 through 1922, witnessing both the drama and banality of life as a detective. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to retire, but it sparked one of America's brightest writing careers. Hailed as American classics, Hammett's work-from his Continental Op stories to novels such as Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man -inspired generations of writers, from Chandler to Connelly. Nathan Ward reveals how Hammett's experience as a detective informed the stories and characters that would come to define the crime genre, casting brilliant new light on the life and times of one of America's most celebrated novelists.