The Big Book of the Continental Op — Dashiell Hammett, author; Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett, editors

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The hard boiled detective is probably my favorite archetype character in crime fiction and I thought it would be fun to visit the roots of the genre. Between 1923 and 1930, Dashiell Hammett recorded the cases of the unnamed employee of the Continental Detective Agency, the Continental Op, in 28 short stories and two serialized novels in the pages of The Black Mask magazine. Before I got my hands on this book, I only knew The Op from the novel, Red Harvest, and didn't realize the treat in store to have all the Op stories collected in one volume.

The Op was the earliest instance of a detective being referred to as "hard- boiled" that I came across.  This was in Red Harvest/The Cleansing of Poisonville (1927). Interestingly, later I read another Black Mask author, Carrol John Daily who has his detective, Race Williams, refer to himself as hard boiled in The Snarl of the Beast (19927). Snarl... slightly predates Hammett's use of hard boiled. These are the first uses of hard boiled or hard-boiled or hardboiled however you want to spell it that I've encountered. I'd love to know if there are earlier uses of the term.

The Op differs from most of the hard boiled detectives in that he is an employee of a national agency. We generally see the detective operating solo. Having worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, it was logical for Hammett to put his detective in that environment where Hammett could use his experiences. Also, in appearance, The Op isn't how we typically imagine a detective. He frequently describes himself and is described by others as short, fat, and middle-aged, not your Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe.

One aspect of the period in which the stories are set that stood out for me is that the detective and the police work together. Apparently it wasn't unusual at the time for a detective agency such as the Continental (ie Pinkerton) to have better resources than the police. In Hammett's detective world you see the police allowing The Op to interview witnesses and suspects in their presence, having the Op and the police follow up leads together, and the police don't bat an eye if The Op asks them to stick someone in a cell. Contrast this with Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

The stories are still very readable with solid and interesting plots and characters and narrated in first person by The Op. The modern reader should be aware that the stories reflect the time in which they were written which means that Black and Chinese characters are more stereotypes than people. I'm also reading the republished Hardman series — also hard boiled —by Ralph Dennis set some 40 years later and these editions come with a warning that they reflect the times in which they were written. Personally, I look at these characterizations just as artifacts of the time

Obviously, coming to stories set in the 20s from the modern detective, the absence of technology is notable. No mobile phones so the detectives have to find pay phones and no internet for email — telegrams are frequently used —and web searching. Rather, the detective has to use the tried and true shoe leather method — look at the evidence, find connections, interview everyone, trust nothing any one tells you,  anything, however trivial, might be important later so dismiss nothing. If you think about it, this is the way cases were investigated for the next 70+ years. As a librarian (ret.) I was interested that, in lieu of the internet, The Continental Detective Agency maintained extensive and well organized clipping files, apparently on every criminal and crime committed in the US. I'd love to know how that worked.

In addition to the short stories, this volume includes two serialized novel length stories, The Dain Curse and The Cleansing of Poisonville. The Dain Curse is four connected stories. The first story, Black Lives, is the setup, giving us the main characters in the next three stories and the plot point that a young woman, Gabrielle Leggett might be under a curse. Subsequent stories seem to bear this possibility out.

The four part The Cleansing of Poisonville particularly interested me because it was later sold as a novel titled Red Harvest and Red Harvest was my introduction to The Continental Op. The Op is hired by the editor of the local Personville (ie Poisonville) newspapers. He is murdered before he can meet with the Op and his father subsequently hires The Op to clean up the gang-ridden Personville. 

This story is interesting in that The Op here isn't particularly likable. As the story proceeds, he seems to develop a killing fever, basically orchestrating the killing of members of the gang factions by playing them off against each other. He even shoots down a police detective. Ok, the detective was corrupt but it wasn't in self defense. At one point, a fellow operatives begins to believe that The Op might be more involved in the deaths than is right for a company detective and leaves the job.

Knopf, the publisher of Red Harvest requested numerous changes to the serialized story and there are many small changes in word choice, slang, and rephrasing sentences. There are also major changes to tone down the violence. Hammett was happy with the suggestions but I lean toward preferring the serial version. In one scene in The Cleansing of Poisonville, the gangster Lew Yard is blown up along with his wife and maid when he starts his can. In Red Harvest he is shot walking down his front steps. Red Harvest also eliminates entirely the scene whee the office of the chief of police is blown up. I liked these two scenes because Personville is a mining town and dynamite is readily available and a logical choice of gangsters.

Here is an example of one of Hammett's rewritten sentences:

The Cleansing of Poisonville

Nick stopped shooting. He put both hands tight to his belly and piled down on his face.

Red Harvest

Nick Stopped shooting. He crossed his guns on his chest and went down in a pile on the sidewalk.

I prefer the Cleansing version, "crossing his guns on his chest" doesn't make sense to me.

I recommend reading both versions of the story.

The Big Book of The Continental Op is a must read if you are interested tracing the development of the hard boiled detective genre from its roots.

Keywords: Black Mask Magazine, hard-boiled detective, crime fiction