{"product_id":"detective-stories-and-other-writings-9781732190344","title":"Detective Stories and Other Writings","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDashiell Hammett\u003c\/strong\u003e is the innovative master and inventor of hard-boiled fiction, an unsentimental style of American crime writing in which the isolated hero exists in a sordid world where treachery is the only norm. Many of these stories first appeared in the pulp magazine \u003cem\u003eBlack Mask\u003c\/em\u003e and exemplify Hammett's formidable literary and moral imagination operating at full strength. These stories introduce the Continental Op, the dispassionate operative from the Continental Detective Agency, a company molded on the Pinkerton Agency, for which Hammett worked prior to taking up writing. In these stories the reader will find the main themes of Hammett's later fiction -- the skewed moral environment where nothing and no one can be trusted, the steely-eyed detective whose only interest is to do his job, and the criminals whose depravity mocks the pretensions of the modern world. These stories create a universe of violence and stealth, of cold passion, desperate action, and great excitement. They prefigure not only the world of subsequent detective fiction, but the contemporary world itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Coyote Canyon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50475405934866,"sku":"9781732190344","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c190681d-1105-4bad-8806-570796df70c8.jpg?v=1730234974","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/detective-stories-and-other-writings-9781732190344","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}