murder

Monsieur Dupin – The Detective Tales of Edgar Allan Poe – With the stories in this collection, Edgar Allan Poe is considered to have founded the genre of detective fiction. These five stories introduced the character of Auguste Dupin and gave us the foundation of “Ratiocination” (or deductive reasoning) from which later detectives such as Sherlock Holmes would claim their fame.

The Continental Op – 1928 – 1928 was a seminal year for Dashiell Hammett. He ended the series of stories known as the Poisonville stories that were later turned into the novel “Red Harvest.” Later in the year he began the series of stories that were turned into the novel “The Dain Curse.”

The Continental Op-1927 – From ‘The Big Knockover’ to the beginnings of the Poisonville stories, 1927 was a very important year for Dashiell Hammett.

The Continental Op -1925-26 – The seven Continental Op stories that Dashiell Hammett wrote during 1925 and 1926 for The Black Mask magazine.

The Continental Op -1924 – The nine Continental Op stories written by Dashiell Hammett in 1924.

The Continental Op -1923 – Written in first person, these are the stories of an unnamed operative for the Continental Detective Agency. The Continental Op deals with the gamut of human crime and cruelty.

Red Harvest – The Original Poisonville Stories – Poisonville is the original set of four novelettes from 1927 and 1928 that were edited together to become the novel Red Harvest. The Continental Op is sent on assignment to a mining town in Montana to do “some business.” The man he was supposed to meet was murdered before he got to meet him.

The Big Knockover – A slick, well-oiled gang hit San Francisco’s financial heart like a flash flood. They stormed the vaults of the city’s biggest banks, cleaned out every penny, then vanished into thin air—like they were never there at all.

The Dain Curse – A destructive fate pursues Gabrielle Leggett wherever she goes; it annihilates her home, penetrates into the new thought temple where she takes refuge, brings her wedding-trip to a tragic end, and drives her to the verge of insanity.