The Hard-Boiled School

Without the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, film noir would not exist, or it would exist in only a flaccid manner. Dashiell Hammett was the only writer of detective fiction who ever worked as a real private detective. In his case, he worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. After losing his health as a soldier in World War One, he found the work of a detective too arduous. Fortunately, he did not find writing too arduous.

Hammett went on to write five great novels and a pile of short stories, all of which I’ve read. His best effort was probably The Maltese Falcon, which featured Sam Spade, the greatest private eye of them all. He never wrote another Sam Spade story, but that character became the hero of a long-running radio series that Hammett didn’t write.

In his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler wrote the most definitive statement ever made about the art of Dashiell Hammett: “But down those mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”