In Search Of The Thin Man-Dashiell Hammett’s Lost Stories-A Book Review

 

Book Review

 

By Sam Lowell

 

Dashiell Hammett: Lost Stories, edited by Vince Emery, 2005    

 

No question most crime detection writers since the 1920s or so owe, whether they acknowledge the fact or not, a huge debt of gratitude to pioneer hard-boiled private detective crime detection writer Dashiell Hammett (Raymond Chandler and a few other too associated with the Black Mask magazine but let’s stick with Hammett here since we are reviewing a book about him and his early work). Owe it as well whether they follow his model or not (and most do one way or another whether creating fictional detective books or for the screen detectives). His model of detectives who unlike previous models were made of ordinary clay, did their detection, their job as a business, as a livelihood rather than as an amateur sport while clipping stocks and bonds coupons, got in trouble with the public cops as much as work with them (or picked up their leavings when they dumped the case in the cold files), had a work-a-day code of conduct which was more or less followed, chased after a few windmills, and made almost every mistake in the book pursuing that blind-folded lady with the slightly- tipped scales.

 

Creating fictional detectives (or any characters that will draw an interest from the reading or film public) that break the mold did not come out of thin air but was a process started from Hammett’s first writings in the 1920s when he got serious about writing stories as a profession. The book under review, Dashiell Hammett: Lost Stories, details through some long forgotten early stories (as of 2005) the history of those early efforts, how they acted as a catalyst to the later more famous work and in the process provides a very impressive chronology of their literary history (and the ups and downs of Hammett getting his work published as well).               

 

Most Hammett aficionados know that his reputation rests mainly on The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, three other novels, the Continental Op series and a bunch of detective stories in the famous Black Mask magazine and that output occurred in a relatively short span from the early 1920s to about the early 1940s and then he sort of fell off the earth as far as his literary production went (he died in 1961). What the editor has done here is set up (after an important introduction by Joe Gores who owed, and acknowledged that he owed, that debt of gratitude to Hammett in his own award-winning work) is block off these 21 lost stories into chronology periods and give a description of their original fates, the social and economic conditions of the Hammett household (and the times to put his situation in perspective), and what he was trying to achieve with each effort.         

 

That “what he was trying to achieve” part turned out for me to be the most interesting aspect of the book since for the most part except the stories Ber-Bulu and The Green Elephant they don’t measure up to any of more famous previously known work. The editor (Vince Emery) created charts throughout the book which featured what he called Hammett-isms, literary devices, mannerisms, commonly used expressions and the like Hammett used which showed something I had suspected is true of most writers who have published more than a couple of works-they stand by, one may say fall in love with, some tried and try concepts throughout their careers. In Hammett’s case it is interesting to see even in the early stories how he was writing about ordinary people for ordinary people. And created characters who placed him in the pantheon of American literature in the twentieth century.

 

Do you need to this book? No. You need to read the five novels and you had better make The Maltese Falcon the first one if you want to know what it was like to be present at the creation of the hard-boiled private detective, know what it was like when men and women wrote such works for keeps. Then when you become a Hammett aficionado grab this one.