GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #16

THE CONTINENTAL OP

There were other detectives before Dashiell Hammett's nameless operative of the Continental Detective Agency, but there were none better.  Hammett (1894-1961), well known and regarded as the true innovator of the hardboiled style of literature, gave us a private eye that would influence detective fiction for decades to come.  The success of Hammett and his creation is closely tied to the pulp magazine Black Mask.  It was founded in 1920 by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan and printed traditional thrillers and stories of adventure, but its remembered primarily today for its detective stories.  The hardboiled school of tough private eyes filled the pages of the magazine with stories by Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, George Harmon Coxe, Frank Gruber, and so many others.  These pulp tales were fast-paced, violent, cynical, and sometimes even romantic.  The magazine achieved preeminence under the editorship of Captain  Joseph T. Shaw who ran the pulp 1926-1936.  It was a viable periodical into the 1940s but mainly published reprints in its later years.  It ceased publication in 1951.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland in 1894.  He dropped out of school at age 13 and knocked around at various jobs before landing a position with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Baltimore.  He used his experience extensively in his fiction.  He spent 8 years with the Pinkertons, then served in WWI until he contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized.  In the hospital in California he met nurse Josephine Annas Dolan and they were married in 1920 and had two children.  He returned to the Pinkertons in their San Francisco office, briefly, but quit.  He filled his days with writing advertising copy and his nights with liquor.  He separated from his wife and kids and began writing detective stories.  His first Op story appeared in Black Mask on October 1, 1923.  He quickly became one of the most successful writers at the pulp magazine.

This first creation of Hammett's was one of the most significant in the literature of crime.  Carroll John Daly's private eye Race Williams preceded Hammett's Op in Black Mask by a few months, but Hammett's character was the real deal in comparison.  The Op had a lot of Hammett in him and many of his cases were based on Hammett's experiences as a Pinkerton detective.  But the primary model for the faceless, nameless detective was James Wright, assistant superintendent of Pinkerton's Baltimore office and Hammett's former boss.  The Op spoke in a terse manner using the vernacular of the day - the speech of the common people - and he operated in a cold, methodical fashion.  He was a cool professional unopposed to casual violence and he possessed a code of honor that he lived by and would be willing to die for.  As the Op explained, "I like being a detective, like the work.  And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can.  Otherwise there'd be no sense to it."  In some of the stories the Op is described as fat and middle-aged, and that remains the only description of him.  Hammett claimed that he didn't avoid giving the Op a name on purpose, but "He's more or less of a type, and I'm not sure he's entitled to a name."  The quiet manager of the Continental Detective Agency, known as "the Old Man", gives the Op his orders.  in his seventies, the Old Man "had no more warmth in him than a hangman's rope."  Once he has his orders, the Op will give his life for a client, if necessary, and he remains loyal to his agency, however great the temptation.  As Raymond Chandler wrote, "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse".

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1929 "Red Harvest" (serialized in Black Mask Nov 1927-Feb 1928);  1929 "The Dain Curse" (serialized in Black Mask Nov 1928-Feb 1929);  1943 "$106,000 Blood Money" (a novelette that combined two stories from Black Mask, the title piece and "The Big Knockover");  1945 "The Continental Op" (s.s.);  1945 "The Return of the Continental Op" (s.s.);  1946 "Hammett Homicides" (4 of the stories are Op tales);  1947 "Dead Yellow Women" (4 of the stories are op tales);  1948 "Nightmare Town" (2 of the stories are Op tales);  1950 "The Creeping Siamese" (3 of the stories are Op tales);  1952 "Woman in the Dark" (3 of the stories are Op tales);  1962 "A Man Named Thin" (1 of the stories is an Op tale).

In "Red Harvest" his first book appearance, the Op fights political corruption in Personville, a town so contaminated with vice that its citizens casually call it "Poisonville".  By setting warring criminal factions against one another the Op manages to get most of them killed off and the town cleaned up.  "The Dain Curse", the Op's other appearance in a novel is, in Hammett's words, "a silly story" involving more than 30 characters leaping from one coast to the other.  The Op personally shoots and stabs one man to death, helps shoot another dead, wrestles with five women, and fights off a supernatural being - bare handed.  He is involved in a jewel burglary, 8 separate and distinct murders, and a seduction.  He is attacked with knives, guns, bombs, and chloroform, cures a girl of drug addiction, and deals with a family curse.  The many short stories of the Op are better.  With the exception of one, "Who Killed Bob Teal?" which appeared in the November 1924 issue of True Detective, the rest were all printed in Black Mask.

Oct 1, 1923 "Arson Plus";  Oct 15, 1923 "Slippery Fingers";  Oct 15, 1923 "Crooked Souls" (aka "The Gatewood Caper");  Nov 1, 1923 "It" (aka "The Black Hat That Wasn't There");  Dec 1, 1923 "The House Dick" (aka "Bodies Piled Up");  Jan 1, 1924 "The Tenth Clew";  Feb 1, 1924 "Night Shots";  Mar 1, 1924 "Zigzags of Treachery";  Apr 1, 1924 "One Hour";  Apr 15, 1924 "The House on Turk Street";  June 1924 "The Girl with Silver Eyes";  Sept 1924 "Women, Politics and Murder" (aka "Death on Pine Street");  Nov 1924 "The Golden Horseshoe";  Jan 1925 "Mike or Alec or Rufus" (aka "Tom, Dick or Harry");  Mar 1925 "The Whosis Kid";  May 1925 "The Scorched Face";  Sept 1925 "Corkscrew";  Nov 1925 "Dead Yellow Woman";  Dec 1925 "The Gutting of Couffignal";  Mar 1926 "Creeping Siamese";  Feb 1927 "The Big Knockover";  May 1927 "$106,000 Blood Money";  June 1927 "The Main Death";  Jan 1928 "This King Business";  Aug 1929 "Fly Paper";  Feb 1930 "The Farewell Murder";  Nov 1930 "Death and Company".

FILMS

"Roadhouse Nights" Paramount, 1930.  Helen Morgan, Fred Kohler, Jimmy Durante, Charles Ruggles.  Director: Hobart Henley.  Based on "Red Harvest".  This film has very little to do with Hammett's novel and is instead a musical comedy about reporters trying to get the goods on a gangster.  A much better film, closer to the novel but never credited as such, is "Last Man Standing" (1996) with Bruce Willis, Bruce Dern, and Christopher Walken.

"The House on Turk Street" Seven Arts, 2002.  Samuel L. Jackson, Milla Jovovich, Stellan Skarsgard, Doug Hutchison.  Director: Bob Rafelson.  Based on the short story.  Jackson is a San Francisco cop who tries to help a friend find his missing daughter.  He's soon up against an international gang of bond thieves.  A bad movie with little of the original Hammett story used.

TELEVISION

"The Dain Curse" 1978 made-for-TV miniseries.  James Coburn (The Op), Hector Elizondo, Jason Miller, Jean Simmons, Paul Stewart (The Old Man).  Based on the novel.  This 6-hour miniseries was a faithful adaptation.

"Fly Paper" Showtime, 1994.  An episode of the noir anthology series "Fallen Angels".  Christopher Lloyd (Jim from "Taxi") plays the Op and delivers the best performance of the character.  Darren McGavin is the Old Man.  An excellent adaptation.  The best.