I purchased a copy of a Dashiell Hammett collection, The Big Knockover. And I’m glad I did. With a single exception, the book is a treasury of several of Hammett’s Continental Op stories. The odd man out is a partially finished novel called Tulip. If one can extrapolate from Lillian Hellman’s introduction, Tulip appears to be semi-autobiographical. So it is of interest from that angle, and, of course, is well-written. But it is a sideshow, not the main attraction.
If Philip Marlowe is the hero who can walk down these mean streets, neither tarnished nor afraid, and Sam Spade can walk those same streets but wearing rather more tarnish on his armor, then the (never named) Continental Op is the man who trudges through the gutters of those mean streets without any armor whatsoever. He is the man who gets his hands dirty, is comfortable in the mud, and is aware that he is comfortable in the mud. His soul may pick up a light coating of filth in the process, but he is willing to pay the price.
The Continental Op is a unique character. Short, pudgy, and with a face that must show the evidence of the repeated violence he is subject to, he isn’t the traditional figure of a hero. He is a former WWI captain in Army Intelligence. He doesn’t have to work for the Continental Detective Agency; he has opportunities in more than one story to walk away a rich man. But he doesn’t do the work for the money, he does it because he is good at it. And because he is good at it, it offers him purpose.
He narrates the stories, but plays them close to the vest. It appears at times that he is merely pushing his way through to the finish via stubbornness and violence. Then at the end he reveals his awareness of certain factors that demonstrate he pursued a plan more or less the entire time.
The descriptions are terse and laconic, yet precisely encapsulate the object or person. The dialogue is classic 20’s hard boiled slang. These stories are close to perfect. If Hammett hadn’t created Sam Spade or Nick and Nora, he’d still have earned his place in the pantheon of American detective writers by inventing the Continental Op.
Even if you haven’t read any of the Continental Op stories, you have almost certainly enjoyed his influence if you’ve seen Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, or Last Man Standing, all of which are derived from the Continental Op story Red Harvest. I’m sure there are many more takes out there. Hell, even I’ve nodded briefly toward it in the last story in Cesar the Bravo. So, if you have even the remotest interest in hard boiled crime fiction, pick yourself up a copy of The Big Knockover. (Hammett even squeezes in a western. Damned cool.)
I usually end these scribblings by hawking my own wares. Since I’ve already alluded to Cesar the Bravo, I’ll have to promote something else. As hard boiled fiction is the subject of today’s post, how about my story in the anthology Noir? (There is even a short film based on it. Reasonably cool, don’t you think?) That’s a bit of a throwback. In fact it is so old that there are now two editions available, the original and the hard cover (though, NB., the latter excises two stories.)