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7/16/2025, 2:08:27 PM
>>24554653
OK, if we're moving from genteel English country house style to USA hardboiled / noir, might as well start at the top.
Dashiell Hammett didn’t write that much. A bunch of short stories first (not great) and then five novels.
— The Maltese Falcon
is much the best. The detective is a interesting mixture of good and not-so-good. You root for him but you don’t actually like him. This is a must-read; the others are optional.
Two are told first-person by a stolid unglamorous forty-something guy who works for a large detective agency:
— Red Harvest
is basically a ‘corrupt town / gangster’ bloodbath. It's not really a murder mystery as such (it does start off as one, but that murder gets solved very quickly) because we know basically who is guilty (everyone) and we know basically how it has to end (the detective arranges for everyone to kill everyone else). Then
— The Dain Curse
is about a young woman who thinks she's cursed / insane. Slightly weird / eerie vibe. Not bad, but it has some pacing issues. (It's basically in three distinct parts, so there's a lot of stopping and starting, rather than a gradual build-up of tension.) Closer to a pure ‘murder mystery’ because there is a main underlying antagonist who has to be unmasked.
Hammett himself rated
— The Glass Key
highly. The setting is more like Red Harvest (corrupt town, politics overlapping with organized crime) but there is a definite murder mystery in there too. Lastly there’s
— The Thin Man
which is a missing person / murder mystery with a wisecracking retired-detective-plus-wife duo who both drink like fishes, plus a great nasty woman. It's a real oddball offering, lighter than the others without actually being funny.
OK, if we're moving from genteel English country house style to USA hardboiled / noir, might as well start at the top.
Dashiell Hammett didn’t write that much. A bunch of short stories first (not great) and then five novels.
— The Maltese Falcon
is much the best. The detective is a interesting mixture of good and not-so-good. You root for him but you don’t actually like him. This is a must-read; the others are optional.
Two are told first-person by a stolid unglamorous forty-something guy who works for a large detective agency:
— Red Harvest
is basically a ‘corrupt town / gangster’ bloodbath. It's not really a murder mystery as such (it does start off as one, but that murder gets solved very quickly) because we know basically who is guilty (everyone) and we know basically how it has to end (the detective arranges for everyone to kill everyone else). Then
— The Dain Curse
is about a young woman who thinks she's cursed / insane. Slightly weird / eerie vibe. Not bad, but it has some pacing issues. (It's basically in three distinct parts, so there's a lot of stopping and starting, rather than a gradual build-up of tension.) Closer to a pure ‘murder mystery’ because there is a main underlying antagonist who has to be unmasked.
Hammett himself rated
— The Glass Key
highly. The setting is more like Red Harvest (corrupt town, politics overlapping with organized crime) but there is a definite murder mystery in there too. Lastly there’s
— The Thin Man
which is a missing person / murder mystery with a wisecracking retired-detective-plus-wife duo who both drink like fishes, plus a great nasty woman. It's a real oddball offering, lighter than the others without actually being funny.
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