Corkscrew 2

Probably my least favorite of Hammett's short work, this is an attempt to take his normal hard boiled urban detective, the Continental Op, and transplant him into a western milieu. It doesn't work. It has a number of standard western story cliche's (the rube given a mean horse to ride, the slim, slow talking, fast shooting youth, the cantankerous cook, the slick gambler and the menacing Mexican bandit) but they seem tacked together and without Hammett's usual flair for narrative. His dialogue seems a little lacking too, without the normal earthy punch that his readers expect.