I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over
at My
Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read
books that you already own.
The Big Knockover
and Other Stories – Dashiell Hammett
Hammet was a master of PI fiction in the 1920s. These
long stories star The Continental Operative, the nameless detective employed by
the Continental Detective Agency. The writing is lucid, the tone hard-boiled
and the settings realistic.
The Gutting of Couffignal (1925). The Op is employed by a
rich dude to guard the presents at the wedding reception of the rich dude’s
daughter. An audacious attack by a gang
of robbers nets millions in booty. His attempt to recruit the locals on the exclusive
island fails since "You can't fight machine guns and hand grenades with
peaceful villagers and retired capitalists."
Fly Paper (1929). A debutante hangs out with the wrong
people and finds that living on the edge with violence-prone knuckle-walkers is
to her taste. The Op lands right in the middle of four marriages that are all
rotten in unique ways. This story also shows Hammett’s penchant and supreme
ability to set a large number of characters to bounce off each other.
The Scorched Face (1925). The Op is assigned to find two
missing daughters. He uncovers evidence that connects a many socialite suicides
and disappearances. The subtext of unbridled sex and its unfortunate
consequences for vulnerable people – especially women - reflect an unease many
people felt in the 1920s as Victorian mores were discarded.
This King Business (1928). The Op is sent to a Balkan
country to extricate the wayward son of a rich guy. The son has found himself
bankrolling a revolution for a crew of wily Slavs. The treatment of freebooting
– i.e., funding coups out of sheer ignorance and misguided adventure and
idealism – holds powerful interest in this story.
The Gatewood Caper (1923). Another wayward daughter case.
It’s good, but feels half-done, as if its writing were rushed, that the writer should’ve
revised a couple more times.. The setting of the Pacific Northwest – lumbering
land – is persuasive.
Dead Yellow Women (1925). Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown,
the Op and a Master Chinese Tong Boss match wits. In places it feels like a
satire of a Yellow Peril story. The description of the maze-like interior of
the criminal mastermind’s mansion is a tour
de force.
Corkscrew (1925). The Op is a fish out of water when he
assigned to clean up remote Corkscrew, Arizona. This ought to remind the astute
reader of the masterwork Red Harvest. A gunslinger remarks,
“A hombre might guess that you was playing the Circle H. A. R. against
Bardell’s crew, encouraging each side to eat up the other, and save you the
trouble.” The Op replies, “You could be either right or wrong. Do you think
that’d be a dumb play?”
Tulip (1952) is a fragment of an autobiographical novel
Hammett attempted near the end of life. Not consistently convincing as fiction,
it at least presents Hammett’s ideas about literary form and content.
The Big Knockover (1927). Another audacious crime – the
robbery of two banks at the same time. Unlikely that such an operation could be
planned as carefully as the story would have it, but it has a lot of action and
witty dialogue.
106,000 Blood Money (1927). This presents the sequelae
The Big Knockover. Like many aftermath stories, it is less satisfying than the
original, because the characters are made of cardboard. With hinges.
No comments:
Post a Comment