Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett is universally regarded as one of the finest American writers of "hard boiled" detective fiction and his short stories and novels have been hailed as some of the best mystery stories ever written. Hammett would doubtless have gone down in literary history simply for his creation of the detective Sam Spade ("The Maltese Falcon") as well as Nick and Nora Charles ("The Thin Man" series), but he is also the creator of another of the most...

One of only three Sam Spade short stories, this one involves a blackmailing poet, a seductive chanteuse, her rough-hewn stage-door-johnny, and, of course, murder. Recorded before a live audience in New York.

When a hard-fighting detective arrives in Personville and finds that his client has been murdered, he decides to investigate local gangland activities.

"When Secret Agent X-9 premiered in January 1934, King Features could proudly boast that its new adventure strip was written by the world's most famous mystery writer — Dashiell Hammett, the man who virtually invented the hard-boiled detective in such novels as The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and Red Harvest. The artist chosen was less well-known — at this point, Alex Raymond was merely an uncredited assistant on Tim Tyler's Luck and the humor...

Two rival gangs compete for control of a city during the Prohibition era.