The Complete Continental Op: 30 Classic Detective Stories

Before Sam Spade, before Philip Marlowe, before Mike Hammer, before Lew Archer, and before nearly every hard-boiled detective in mystery fiction, there was the Continental Op. Who was he? No one knows, since Dashiell Hammett never gives his name. Reporting to the 'Old Man' at the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency, the Op is short and fat but tough, as these thirty stories testify. Through these thirty stories, we see the Op solve crimes, usually murder, in and around ...