Arson Plus
By Dashiell Hammett
After luncheon, McClump and I called on Howard Henderson — the man who had seen the fire while driving home from Wayton. He had an office in the Empire Building, with his name and the title Northern California Agent for Krispy Korn Krumbs on the door. He was a big, careless-looking man of forty-five or so, with the professionally jovial smile that belonged to the travelling salesman.
He said he had been in Wayton on business the day of the fire and stayed there until relatively late, going to dinner and playing pool with a grocer named Hammersmith—one of his customers. He had left Wayton in his machine at about ten-thirty and set out for Sacramento. At Lavender, he had stopped at the garage for oil and gas and to have one of his tyres blown up.
Just as he was about to leave the garage, the garage man had called his attention to a red glare in the sky and told him that it was probably from a fire somewhere along the old county road that paralleled the state road into Sacramento. Henderson had taken the county road and arrived at the burning house just in time to see Thornburgh try to fight his way through the flames that enveloped him.
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Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories.
Biography.
He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), The Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
Hammett is regarded as one of the very best mystery writers. His obituary in The New York Times described him as “the dean of the… ‘hard-boiled’ school of detective fiction.” Time included Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harvest on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. 1990, the Crime Writers’ Association picked three of his five novels for The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time. Five years later, The Maltese Falcon placed second on the Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time as selected by the Mystery Writers of America; Red Harvest, The Glass Key and The Thin Man were also on the list. His novels and stories also significantly influenced films, including the genres of private eye/detective fiction, mystery thrillers, and film noir.
Marriage and family
Hammett and Dolan had two daughters, Mary Jane (1921) and Josephine (1926). Shortly after the birth of their second child, health services nurses informed Dolan that, owing to Hammett’s tuberculosis, she and the children should not live with him full-time. Dolan rented a home in San Francisco, where Hammett would visit on weekends. The marriage soon fell apart; however, he continued to financially support his wife and daughters with the income he made from his writing.
Career and personal life
Hammett was first published in 1922 in the magazine The Smart Set. Known for the authenticity and realism of his writing, he drew on his experiences as a Pinkerton operative. Hammett wrote most of his detective fiction while living in San Francisco in the 1920s; streets and other locations in San Francisco are frequently mentioned in his stories. He said, “I take most of my characters from real life.” His novels were some of the first to use dialogue that sounded authentic to the era. “I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much, it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”
The bulk of his early work, featuring a nameless private investigator, The Continental Op, appeared in the leading crime-fiction pulp magazine Black Mask. Both Hammett and the magazine struggled in the period when Hammett became established.
Legacy
Hammett’s influence on popular culture has continued well after his death. For example, in 1975, the film The Black Bird starred George Segal as Sam Spade, Jr.; the film was a sequel and parody of the Maltese Falcon. The 1976 comedic film Murder by Death spoofed several famous literary investigators, including several of Hammett’s. The film’s characters included Sam Diamond and Dick and Dora Charleston, which were parodies of Hammett’s Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles. In 2006, Rachel Cohn published the YA novel Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, whose main characters were named after the sleuths in Hammett’s Thin Man series. The book was made into a film of the same name and released in 2008. Later, Rachel Cohn and David Levithan authored several books whose main characters are named after Hammett and his partner. 2011, they published the YA suspenseful romance Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares. That was followed by the sequels The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily in 2016 and Mind the Gap, Dash & Lily in 2020. The book series was made into a Netflix television series.
Dashiell Hammett
