Dashiell Hammett: Difference between revisions

* [[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 (Film)|the 1941 one]]. Both of them, incidentally, were terrible--although the second of them, ''Satan Met A Lady'', features a young Bette Davis.

* [[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

* [[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''.}}

* [[Town With a Dark Secret]]: "Nightmare 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.

 

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