The Dain Curse

Great crime fiction started with Hammett
He is master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer
His name remains one of the most important and recognisable in the crime fiction genre. Hammett set the standard for much of the work that would follow
One of the foremost practitioners of the hard-boiled detective story
Hammett's prose is clean and entirely unique. His characters are as sharp and economically defined as any in American literature
Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best
He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used
The dean of the school of hard-boiled fiction