The Continental Op Stories 1925 to 1926

Five early cases from the pulp magazine where hardboiled fiction was invented, narrated by the fat, nameless operative who never wastes a word on sentiment. Includes the first Continental Op story ever published.

Dashiell Hammett

Nine cases from 1924, opening with a novelette where the detective is handed nine useless clues and has to go find the tenth. Reprinted from the original magazine pages with the editors' introductions intact.

Dashiell Hammett

The first appearance of Race Williams, the private investigator who arrived two years before Hammett's Op and set the template for every hardboiled hero after him. He tells his own story in blunt, unpolished street talk.

Carroll John Daly

A body on the beach opens a case that drags Daly's investigator through blackmail and a killer nobody can put a face to. A full length novel from the writer who invented the hardboiled private eye voice.

Carroll John Daly