Da quando è tornato in libertà, l'ex galeotto Brazil - condannato per aver ucciso un uomo in una rissa - conduce una vita tranquilla e appartata, ben deciso a tenersi alla larga da altri guai. Ma il destino torna a bussare alla sua porta. Una notte, proprio davanti al suo cottage, una donna si sloga la caviglia, e gli chiede aiuto. Luise Fischer, di origine svizzera, è la mantenuta del magnate Kane Robson, uomo violento e di pochi scrupoli, che di lì a poco arriva a riprendersela accompagnato da uno scagnozzo. Per difenderla, Brazil colpisce l'uomo, che batte malamente la testa sul caminetto. Il colpo sembra fatale. In un lampo Brazil intuisce che le porte della prigione potrebbero chiudersi di nuovo dietro di lui. Determinato a non finire più in cella, inizia insieme a Luise una strenua lotta per dimostrare la propria innocenza. Tra insidie e fughe, i due si trovano a combattere contro un mondo di arroganza, ambiguità e corruzione che li vuole intrappolare.

Dashiell Hammett, lo scrittore che ha rivoluzionato il mondo del giallo, il padre del genere noir americano, è qui - fuori dalla pagina scritta - sul banco degli imputati. Siamo in pieno periodo maccartista, la caccia alle streghe è spietata. La Commissione sulle attività antiamericane, più nota come Commissione McCarthy, chiede conto a Hammett dei suoi rapporti con il Partito comunista e soprattutto esige che faccia i nomi dei dirigenti del Civil Rights Congress, che gestisce il fondo cauzioni per liberare i militanti di sinistra arrestati per motivi politici. Hammett si rifiuta. Preferisce affrontare la durezza del carcere piuttosto che collaborare in alcun modo con chi vuole fare - e fa - terreno bruciato attorno a ogni dissenso. Come gli investigatori protagonisti dei suoi romanzi, umani antieroi che svolgono un "mestieraccio" in un'America molto realistica, violenta e corrotta, e che vogliono "ficcare nel meccanismo una leva dentata" (ci confida l'indimenticabile detective Spade), così Hammett preferisce opporre il diritto al silenzio all'ottuso strapotere del maccartismo e affrontare con coraggio le gravi conseguenze che gliene deriveranno. Prefazione di Gianrico Carofiglio.

A murder investigation requires Detective Sam Spade--a man of few words who displays little emotion but possesses his own strict code of ethics--to become involved in a dangerous search for a valuable statue, in a full-cast dramatization of the classic noir novel. Book available.

A murder investigation requires Detective Sam Spade--a man of few words who displays little emotion but possesses his own strict code of ethics--to become involved in a dangerous search for a valuable statue, in a full-cast dramatization of the classic noir novel. Book available.

Dieci racconti di Dashiell Hammett, uno degli innovatori della letteratura noir americana. Nel filone hard-boiled, diventano maggiormente centrali le psicologie dei personaggi, con i suoi duri e ruvidi detective, e la descrizione realistica della società, amara e spietata. Il tutto è descritto da Hammett in uno stile sobrio, essenziale, corrispondente all'intento di rappresentazione obiettiva, e con una punta di quel cinismo che non consente di indulgere in idealismi, sentimentalismi e ipocrisie.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

One of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century, Dashiell Hammett gave us crime fiction stripped down to its most subtle and searing essentials and, at the same time, elevated to literature. The diamond-sharp prose and artfully manipulated intrigue for which he is known are on full display in the four classic short stories and two riveting novels published here in one volume.

The Continental Op, Hammett's anonymous antihero, was the indelible prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. Single-minded, emotionally detached, and decidedly unglamorous, he narrates the four linked stories collected here—“The House in Turk Street,” “The Girl with the Silver Eyes,” “The Big Knockover,” and “$106,000 Blood Money.” In THE DAIN CURSE, the Continental Op takes on his most bizarre case, that of a wealthy young woman who appears to be the victim of a deadly family curse. And THE GLASS KEY—Hammett's own favorite among his works—features his most cynical and morally ambiguous hero, Ned Beaumont, caught in a hard-boiled love triangle.

Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op. In his novels and stories, Dashiell Hammett created some of the most memorable characters--detectives, dames, and assorted miscreants--in twentieth-century fiction. It is nearly impossible to imagine modern American literature without Hammett.

Vintage Hammett features episodes from Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, The Dain Curse, and The Thin Man; and stories featuring the Continental Op, including “The House in Turk Street,” “The Girl with the Silver Eyes," and "Flypaper.” It also includes the story "Nightshade" which has not been available in over fifty years.

Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers, presented in attractive, affordable paperback editions.

A murder investigation requires Detective Sam Spade--a man of few words who displays little emotion--to become involved in a dangerous search for a valuable statue. Read by William Dufris. Book available.

A Hammett si deve l'elaborazione di quello stile di scrittura caratterizzato da realismo asciutto e oggettività al limite del cinismo, senza perdere di vista la profondità e il lato umano dei personaggi. Nelle sue pagine prende forma quell'America dura, brutale e violenta in cui l'avidità e l'inganno appaiono impulsi fondamentali dell'agire umano. Eppure Hammett non è solo un autore "di genere", è scrittore colto, capace di una grande sensibilità per la realtà che lo circonda e di cogliere tutti gli aspetti di una cultura in continua evoluzione: il passaggio cruciale dall'euforia degli anni Venti alla Depressione, con il passaggio alla moderna società di massa. Il volume raccoglie cinque romanzi e una serie consistente di racconti.

In una località della provincia americana fra le Montagne Rocciose, Personville, un investigatore privato viene chiamato dal direttore del giornale locale per un motivo imprecisato. Appena il tempo di arrivare e subito vede morire il giornalista rimanendo invischiato in un traffico di criminalità insospettabile per una città così piccola. Un magnate senza scrupoli, un capo della polizia corrotto, una sfilza quanto mai varia e colorita di gangster e poi Dinah Brand, una giovane donna avida e ambiziosa che sembra sedurre e manovrare tutti, salvo restare lei stessa vittima del proprio gioco. Sono questi i personaggi di un'impressionante sequela di omicidi, sparatorie, inseguimenti e colpi di scena.

A revealing look inside the mind of the one of the great writers of detective fiction includes essays, twenty-four stories, and an early version of "The Thin Man."

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

The three classic novels published here in one volume are rich with the crisp prose, subtle characters, and intricate plots that made Dashiell Hammett one of the most admired writers of the twentieth century.

A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel. In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade, a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, tangles with a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. The Thin Man introduces Hammett's wittiest creations, Nick and Nora Charles, who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. And in Red Harvest, Hammett's anonymous tough-guy detective, the Continental Op, takes on the entire town of Poisonville in a deadly war against corruption.

"Dashiell Hammett is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer."—Boston Globe

”Hammett was spare, hard-boiled, but he did over and over what only the best writers can ever do. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.”—Raymond Chandler

”Hammett's prose was clean and entirely unique. His characters were as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.”—The New York Times

”As a novelist of realistic intrigue, Hammett was unsurpassed in his own or any time.”—Ross Macdonald

”Dashiell Hammett's dialogues can be compared only with the best in Hemingway.”—André Gide

”Hammett is one of the best contemporary American writers.”—Gertrude Stein

"Hammett's pioneering hard-boiled style has been much imitated, but the original--packs a wallop."--The New Yorker

Here are twenty long-unavailable stories by the master who brought us The Maltese Falcon. Laconic coppers, lowlifes, and mysterious women double- and triple-cross their colleagues with practiced nonchalance. A man on a bender awakens in a small town with a dark mystery at its heart. A woman confronts a brutal truth about her husband. Here is classic noir: hard-boiled descriptions to rival Hemingway, verbal exchanges punctuated with pistol shots and fisticuffs. Devilishly plotted, whip-smart, impassioned, Nightmare Town is a treasury of tales from America's poet laureate of the dispossessed.

The complete novels of Dashiell Hammett--including The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man--are collected here, offering a harrowing, realistic portrait of crime and introducing such memorable characters as Sam Spade.

Short, thick-bodied, mulishly stubborn, and indifferent to physical pain, Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op was the prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. He is also the hero of most of the nine stories in this volume. The Op's one enthusiasm is doing his job, and in The Big Knockover the jobs entail taking on a gang of modern-day freebooters, a vice-ridden hell's acre in the Arizona desert, and the bank job to end all bank jobs, along with such assorted grifters as Babe McCloor, Bluepoint Vance, Alphabet Shorty McCoy, and the Dis-and-Dat Kid.

When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.

Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.

The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your reading of this outstanding selection from the 'hard-boiled' school of crime writing: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. We hope that it will provide you with new ways of looking at--and talking about--the nature of detective fiction, as well as give you insight into how the hard-boiled style of writing emerged in the genre; how the style was shaped by twentieth-century American culture and by the lives of the men who created it; and how this form of writing has subsequently affected the way we view ourselves as Americans.

Short, thick-bodied, mulishly stubborn, and indifferent to pain, Dashiell Hammett's Continetal Op was the prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. In these stories the Op unravels a murder with too many clues, looks for a girl with eyes the color of shadows on polished silver, and tangles with a crooked-eared gunman called the Whosis Kid.