This is the sequel to the Big Knockover, and its best to read them back to back as one long story to get the full value of Hammett's muscular narrative. This story involves the attempt to capture the primary plotters of the daring robbery in the Big Knockover, and is full of betrayal, subtlety and Hammett's incisive view of human corruption.

It is also one of the stories where the amoral character of the protagonist (the Continental Op) is most evident. As in the brilliant novel Red Wind, he is willing to commit a certain amount of crime, and arrange a certain amount of proxy murder if it achieves the required end.

To a large degree, this is one of Hammett's primary contributions to the literature of crime. He took murder away from set piece puzzles with effete people talking politely to each other, and put it in a less fragrant and far less pleasant, but far more real word. It is Hammett and his successors like Chandler, Thompson, MacDonald, Ellroy and a few others who saved the genre from irrelevance, and in most cases stepped outside of its simple conventions to say something valuable.