The Op is a tough, wry, unglamorous gumshoe who has inspired a following that is both global and enduring. He has been published in periodicals, paperback digests, and short story collections, but until now, he has never, in all his ninety-two years, had the whole of his exploits contained in one book.
A large 750-page book was published recently, The Big Book of the Continental Op, featuring all twenty-eight of the original standalone Continental Op stories, the original serialized versions of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, and previously unpublished material including an incomplete story. This anthology of Continental Op stories is the only complete, one-volume work of its kind. If you love 1920s detective fiction, especially the pulp era feel, this is a must-have.
The Continental Op stories are rooted in Hammett’s experiences as an operative for Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Although Hammett worked for Pinkerton’s for a scant five years—before and after his service in the U.S. Army during World War I—the job inspired both his writing career and his worldview. Some influences are plain. The Continental Detective Agency, for example, is modeled on Pinkerton’s, their Baltimore office located in the Continental Trust Company Building, where Hammett had been hired. Hammett said his cases largely involved forgeries, bank swindles, and safe burglaries, a solid factual basis for the Op’s fictional adventures, albeit considerably enlivened.
The Continental Op stories were published individually during the early years of Hammett’s writing career, between 1923 and 1930. All but two were featured in Black Mask, the leading light of pulp magazines—a favorite among working-class readers, crime-fiction aficionados, and anyone who longed for a coin’s worth of well-crafted thrills. In June of 1929, near the end of the run, Hammett sent a note to Harry Block, his editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He had just sent Block a draft of his third novel, The Maltese Falcon, which he described as “by far the best thing” he’d done so far.
Between 1951 and 1961—the last decade of Hammett’s life—virtually no one published the Op, Sam Spade, Ned Beaumont, Nick Charles, or any of Hammett’s fiction. It was the era of the Red Scare, with its blacklists and committee hearings, and the beginnings of the Cold War, rife with anti-Soviet fear mongering and jingoistic conservatism. Hammett had made no secret of his left-wing affiliations, and with the taint of the Red brush, he became unmarketable. His income was devastated, his publishers wary, the radio shows based on his work canceled.
Many consider the Continental Op a far better character than Sam Spade. Spade is not a particularly nice guy, on the other hand the Op's first person voice is like that of an old friend's. The Op is a Roaring Twenties lawman who breaks heads and takes names as well as turning a blind eye to Prohibition, as eager to go into a speakeasy as the next man. It's worth mentioning there's a lot more Continental Op material than there is about Spade too, about six times as much.
