The Dain Curse

ANNOTATION

Of Hammett's sixth book, published in 1931, The New York Times wrote "the developing relationships among the characters are as exciting as the unfolding story."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett's tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.

A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel. This classic Hammet work of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.

ANNOTATION

Sam Spade, a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, stars in Hammett's cooly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted 2 generations of readers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book ReviewIf the locution 'hard-boiled' had not already been coined it would be necessary to coin it now to describe the characters of Dashiell Hammett's latest detective story. . . there is plenty of excitement.

–  review, February 1930

ANNOTATION

Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve crimes in between wisecracks and martinis.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Hammett did over and over what only the best writers ever do...he wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.

– Raymond Chandler

The most breathless of Hammett's stories.

– Sinclair Lewis