| REVIEWER | RATING & REVIEW |
 | irishgit (160)
10/25/2008 | The Continental Ops stories are brilliant, as are Red Harvest and the Maltese Falcon. Created the modern mystery novel.
(5 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | GenghisTheHun (184)
02/05/2007 |  Interesting fellow and one who, unfortunately, for us wasted his life. He never wrote another novel after 1934, and he lived until 1961. He gets a "5" for talent and a "1" for a human being--average "3."
After 1934, he devoted his life to alcohol and to defending and perpetrating the Communist Party.
He posted bail for four communists in the early 1950's and when they jumped bail and fled, he was held in contempt for refusing to tell of their whereabouts.
He testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to name names. He was blacklisted.
A sad part of his life was the fact that the IRS seized all his literary rights because he refused to pay taxes. Lillian Hellman convinced the IRS to put the rights up for auction. Then Hellman convinced Hammett's daughters, whom he had abandoned early in their lives, not to bid on the rights by stating a lie that the daughters would be liable for all Hammett's debts.
Hellman bought the rights for $5,000 and made millions on the television adaptations and reprints of the stories and novels, thereby cheating the daughters out of their rights. That is a disgusting coda to Hammett's wasted life.
(3 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | DrEntropy (40)
03/13/2006 | Invented the American crime novel. The English detective novel involves a harmonious world structured by class, endangered by crime, and redeemed by a heroic gentleman detective. The American crime novel deals with a much darker, more realistic world in which a cynical protagonist tries to solve a mystery (not always succeeding, or succeeding only partly) and simply survive in a world not worth saving. While Hammett deserves credit for creating this genra, Raymond Chandler perfected it. Hammett's best (Red Harvest) was the equal of anything Chandler wrote, while The Maltese Falcon was turned into one of the greatest Hollywood films ever made (and started Humphrey Bogart's career, as well).
(3 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | Moosekarloff (22)
06/11/2004 | Hammett was perhaps the most influential practitioner of the hardboiled detective novel, a pioneer who took the early model of Daly and worked it up a a few notches. Red Harvest is a remarkable, break-through novel of its type, The Maltese Falcon is one of the classics of the genre, and The Thin Man is quite an entertaining read. The Continental Op stories are pretty terrific, too. Rates up there with Chandler, Woolrich, Goodis, Thompson and MacMahon as the greatest of the American noir writers.
(6 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | Guava Monkey (4)
03/24/2004 | Classic. Together with Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett is the best detective story writer to come out of the US. Little need to bother with anything else.
(1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | sage9642om (0)
08/11/2000 | Love him! Love Noir!
(0 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
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