Lost Stories: 21 Long-lost Stories from the Best-selling Creator of Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man

Dashiell Hammett

Vince Emery Productions, 2005 - Fiction - 342 pages

Dashiell Hammett, the creator of Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man, was one of the 20th century's most influential and entertaining authors. Even so, many of Hammett's stories--including some of his best--have been out of the reach of anyone but a handful of scholars and collectors, until now. This essential compendium rescues 21 long-lost Hammett stories, all either never collected in an anthology or unavailable for decades. These stories appear nowhere else, and represent a variety of styles from the famous mysterysmith: his first detective fiction, humorous satires, adventure yarns, a sensitive autobiographical piece, and a Thin Man story told with photos. In addition, all stories have been restored to their original versions, replacing often wholesale cuttings with the original text for the first time. To round out this celebration of Hammett, three-time Edgar Award-winner Joe Gores has written an introduction describing how Hammett influenced literature, movies, television, and Gores' own life.

Contents

• A Rough Start: 33
• The Barber and His Wife: 52
• The Road Home: 78

About the author

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on May 27, 1894 in St Mary's County, Maryland. Raised in Baltimore and Philadelphia, he attended Baltimore Polytechnic until he was 13 years old, but was forced to drop out and work a series of jobs to help support his family. At the age of 21 Hammett was hired by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative. After a stint in the United States Army during World War II, he married a nurse named Josephine Annas Dolan, whom he met when he fell ill with tuberculosis. In 1922, Hammett began writing for Black Mask magazine. Using his background in detective work, he created the tough guy detective characters Sam Spade and the Continental Op, as well as debonair sleuths Nick and Nora Charles. By 1927, Hammett had written the Poisonville series, which later became the novel Red Harvest. He wrote more than 85 short stories and five novels during his lifetime. The novels include The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, The Thin Man, and The Maltese Falcon, which was later adapted into a classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart. He also wrote an autobiography entitled Beams Falling: The Art of Dashiell Hammett. After his marriage faltered in the late 1920s, Hammett met Lillian Hellman, then a married 24-year-old aspiring playwright. In 1930, Hellman left her husband for Hammett. Eventually they both divorced their spouses and, although the two never married, they remained together until Hammett's death on January 10, 1961. Joe Gores lives in Marin County, California. Vince Emery is the editor of Lost Stories and the author of the bestseller How to Grow Your Business on the Internet. He lives near San Francisco.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Lost Stories: 21 Long-lost Stories from the Best-selling Creator of Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man; Volume 1 of Ace performer collection
• Author: Dashiell Hammett
• Editor: Vince Emery
• Contributor: Joe Gores
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Vince Emery Productions, 2005
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Apr 7, 2010
• ISBN: 0972589813, 9780972589819
• Length: 342 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Hard-Boiled; Fiction / Short Stories (single author); Literary Criticism / General