A review by batbones
The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett

4.0

Coming from a history of reading Chandler's detective stories, Hammett's style is more spare and to-the-point, although filled with more or less the same characters: detective (the level-headed, fact-reliant moral centre who falls into trouble), perpetrator (frequently, but not always, a femme fatale), dangerous or innocent women and an assortment of men more bad or slimy than good. The eponymous Continental Op is nameless, fat (mentioned a few times), tireless and works in a detective agency with contacts and errand-boys, a useful connection that Philip Marlowe doesn't have. Unlike Marlowe, he is more practical and obliging, less disgusted and wistful. He is no less moral, but morality doesn't occupy the centre of Hammett's stories; the solving of the crime is the motivator and the matter. As the Op states bluntly in one of the stories in this volume, he is no Galahad; he is a dedicated worker on the job, and to me that's just as good. I tire, sometimes, of Chandler's obsession with urban moral degradation, and yearn for a simple mystery where I can turn the lights off with simple satisfaction knowing who did it. For literary cleverness Hammett is just as good, too, but his stories here get better as the collection progresses. The first few weren't too impressive but style and action come together beautifully in 'The Whosis Kid' and thereafter I began to feel him at his best.