Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett was an American crime writer who is one of the founders of the hard-boiled detective fiction genre. Born in Maryland in 1894, he drew on his experience as a Pinkerton detective to create some of the most influential crime fiction ever written, including The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man. Best Cases of the Continental Op collects stories featuring his first great creation — the unnamed Continental Op, a tough, professional private detective working for a San Francisco agency. The stories established the hard-boiled style that would transform crime fiction. Hammett died in 1961. His audiobooks and books offer listeners and readers the foundational works of hard-boiled detective fiction — crime writing that changed the genre forever.