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[[File:Dashiell Hammett "Thin Man" portrait.jpg|thumb|350px|Dashiell Hammett in 1934]]
{{quote|''Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley ... . He wrote at first (and almost to the end) for people with a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there. Violence did not dismay them; it was right down their street.''|[[Raymond Chandler]], [http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html "The Simple Art of Murder"]}}
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894 --1961) was a pioneering writer of [[Hardboiled Detective]] fiction. His stories were backed up by personal experience; he had been a [[Pinkerton Detective]] himself.
Hammett's first major character was the Continental Op, an anonymous operative of the Continental Detective Agency, who first appeared in print in 1923 and went on to feature in over 30 stories and two novels, ''[[Red Harvest]]'' and ''The Dain Curse''. ''Red Harvest'' is thought to have been an influence on [[Akira Kurosawa]]'s film ''[[Yojimbo]]'', and combined with ''The Glass Key'' is a heavy influence on Coen Brothers's noir film ''[[
Hammett's third novel, ''The Maltese Falcon'', introduced the world to prototypical private eye Sam Spade, and is perhaps his single most famous work, though many people [[Adaptation Displacement|know it only via]] [[The Maltese Falcon
His fifth and final novel, ''[[The Thin Man (
Interestingly, he also teamed up with ''Flash Gordon'' artist Alex Raymond on a newspaper comic called ''[
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=== Works by Dashiell Hammett with their own trope pages include: ===
* ''[[Red Harvest]]''
* ''[[The Thin Man (
=== Other works by Dashiell Hammett provide examples of: ===
* [[Acquired Poison Immunity]]: Lampshaded and subverted in "Fly Paper"
* [[Adaptation Displacement]]: Bet you didn't know there were two film versions of ''The Maltese Falcon'' prior to [[The Maltese Falcon
* [[Anti
* [[Blown Across the Room]]: Though Hammett worked as a [[Pinkerton Detective]] and had firearms training from his military service, he happily embraced this trope for dramatic effect, particularly in his Continental Op stories.
** [[Punched Across the Room]]: Also shows up from time to time.
* [[Censor Decoy]] / [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: In ''The Maltese Falcon'', Hammett calls gunman Wilmer Cook "that gunsel," assuming his editors wouldn't know [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gunsel the other meaning] of the word. They didn't.
* [[The Chessmaster]]: The Continental Op, Sam Spade
* [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"]] / [[No Name Given]]: The Continental Op
* [[Femme Fatale]] / [[The Vamp]]: Several of each over various stories. Brigid O'Shaughnessy is the most famous. Although the Continental Op's Jeanne Delano, the 'Girl with the Silver Eyes' is a helluva lady.
* [[Framing the Guilty Party]]: An odd example. In "The Golden Horseshoe", the Op is sure he knows who arranged a double murder, but can't prove it. {{spoiler|So he frames the guilty party for a death that was actually a ''suicide''.}}
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* [[Sassy Secretary]]: Sam Spade's Effie Perrine.
* [[Taking Over the Town]]: "The Gutting of Couffignal".
* [[Town
* [[The Unfettered]]: The Continental Op will get the crooks he's after, no matter what it takes or how many laws he has to break.
* [[What Beautiful Eyes!]]: Jeanne Delano, "The Girl With Silver Eyes". Also [[Uh
* [[You're Insane!]]: ''The Dain Curse''
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Authors]]
[[Category:Dashiell Hammett]]
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