d 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