New York: Lawrence E. Spivak, ( 1927 ). First edition. Paperback. Very Good. 16mo, wrappers

Jonathan Press Mystery J36, a reissue of $106,000 BLOOD MONEY, ca. 1948.

Synopsis

Dashiell Samuel Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs thereafter—messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, operator, and stevedore, finally becoming an operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. Sleuthing suited young Hammett, but World War I intervened, interrupting his work and injuring his health. When Sergeant Hammett was discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work. He soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920s Hammett became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. In The Maltese Falcon (1930) he first introduced his famous private eye, Sam Spade. The Thin Man (1932) offered another immortal sleuth, Nick Charles. Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most successful novels. During World War II, Hammett again served as sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians. Hammett’s later life was marked in part by ill health, alcoholism, a period of imprisonment related to his alleged membership in the Communist Party, and by his long-time companion, the author Lillian Hellman, with whom he had a very volatile relationship. His attempt at autobiographical fiction survives in the story “Tulip,” which is contained in the posthumous collection The Big Knockover (1966, edited by Lillian Hellman). Another volume of his stories, The Continental Op (1974, edited by Stephen Marcus), introduced the final Hammett character: the “Op,” a nameless detective (or “operative”) who displays little of his personality, making him a classic tough guy in the hard-boiled mold—a bit like Hammett himself.

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Details

Bookseller: Thomas J. Joyce And Company (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #: DEMO006799I
Title: THE BIG KNOCKOVER
Author: HAMMETT, Dashiell
Format/Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Used - Very Good
Quantity Available: 1
Edition: First edition
Publisher: Lawrence E. Spivak
Place of Publication: New York
Date Published: ( 1927 )
Keywords: dashiell hammett, mystery fiction, detective fiction,

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Joyce And Company has been in business as a professional rare bookseller and appraiser since 1975. Owner Thomas Joyce was the regular book appraiser on Home & Garden TV\'s \"The Appraisal Fair\\\" program, on international broadcasts. Thomas Joyce was the co-discoverer of George Washington's personal copy of William Leybourn's 1679 edition of THE COMPLEAT SURVEYOR, from which young Washington learned some of his surveying skills at age 16. The book had vanished for nearly a century until its re-discovery in 2017. It is now back at Mt. Vernon.

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First Edition: In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
Wrappers: The paper covering on the outside of a paperback. Also see the entry for pictorial wraps, color illustrated coverings for...