In Search Of Sam Spade-Dashiell Hammett’s Nightmare Town-A Book Review

Book Review

By Sam Lowell

Dashiell Hammett: Nightmare Town, edited by Kirby McCauley, Martin Greenberg, and Ed Gorman, 1999    

 

In an earlier review of some of Dashiell Hammett’s less familiar work to be mentioned below I noted that there was no question most crime detection writers, readers too, 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 associated with the Black Mask magazine too 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 followed his model or not (and most have done so one way or another whether creating detective books or creating 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. Grabbed a few dames, you know frails, in the a bargain.

In many ways Sam Spade, the private eye extraordinaire of The Maltese Falcon, who had a trial run in this compilation under review, Nightmare Town, in three short stories is the epitome of that model which Hammett developed. Working out of a fly-by-night no front office in Frisco town with his soon to be late partner Miles Archer Sam got mixed up in plenty of drama despite his low-key workaday manner. (Archer a partner that he hated, hated so much he had Archer’s name taken off the office door right after his murder and partner whose wife, to his subsequent regret, he was playing around with). Naturally when a dame, not Archer’s wife but a serious piece of work, entered into the picture there are bound to be problems, especially if she is a femme fatale like Brigid. But Sam bought the ticket, took the ride. Played his hand very close to the vest when the bodies started piling up and all led to the pursuit of some stupid bird, some stuff that dreams were made of.

But here is where Hammett broke the new ground. Sam was something of a windmill chaser, needed to see some justice for old Miles who fell in the line of duty when all was said and done. Worked that moral code closely too, that code that said if you are doing private detection as a business then you had better not be addled by some lying skirt and her confederates if only because leaving something un-avenged is bad for business, bad for the profession. Here’s the beautiful part though once he tagged Brigid as the body-counter, once he figured that playing along with her would be a lifetime of looking over his shoulder. He let her take the tumble, take the big step off since she tried to play him for a sap. Made the cops look silly too when they tried to frame him and he gave them the case all tied up in a bow without their help. Yeah, Sam had all the angles covered.    

 

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 early 1920s when he got serious about writing stories as a profession (after being a number of things including soldier in World War I and a Pinkerton private detective himself. I recently reviewed a book, Dashiell Hammett: Lost Stories, that detailed 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 like those produced here and in the process provided 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 new literary production went (he died in 1961). The stories in this compilation represent a further maturation of his work and of his characters, particular Spade and the Thin Man. In that earlier review 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. These stories confirm a lot of those classic Hammett-isms noted by Emery.  

It is interesting to see even in these later stories how Hammett was writing about ordinary people for ordinary people. Making his detectives working stuffs like in the real world. Creating believable situations, moral and professional, that real detectives might confront (with a little literary license of course to spice up the drama). And created characters who placed him in the pantheon of American literature in the twentieth century. In the Lost Stories review I asked the generic question that any more specialized work begs-Do you need to this book?  There I said no. You needed to read the five major novels first 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 became a Hammett aficionado grab that book. That is even truer here with Nightmare Town.