The cover page is adapted from Death in a Bowl, a painting completed in 1930 by J. W. Schlaikjer. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jes_Wilhelm_Schlaikjerwww.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
Continental Op Stories
Chapters (28)
- Arson Plus 0:00
- Crooked Souls 40:59
- Slippery Fingers 1:17:05
- It 1:45:22
- Bodies Piled Up 2:17:37
- The Tenth Clue 2:53:46
- Night Shots 4:03:08
- Zigzags of Treachery 4:46:16
- One Hour 6:12:06
- The House in Turk Street 6:41:40
- The Girl with the Silver Eyes 7:33:31
- Women, Politics & Murder 9:11:52
- The Golden Horseshoe 10:13:42
- Who Killed Bob Teal? 11:54:14
- Mike or Alec or Rufus 12:32:04
- The Whosis Kid 13:06:32
- The Scorched Face 14:48:20
- Corkscrew 16:12:03
- Dead Yellow Women 18:17:02
- The Gutting of Couffignal 20:17:23
- Creeping Siamese 21:29:37
- The Big Knock-Over 22:03:53
- $106,000 Blood Money 24:08:58
- The Main Death 25:45:22
- This King Business 26:36:30
- Flypaper 28:41:49
- The Farewell Murder 29:52:22
- Death and Company 31:12:33
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Before there was Sam Spade, before there was Nick Charles, there was the unnamed operative in the Continental Detective Agency: the Continental Op. It was the Continental Op that, through a series of twenty-eight stories and two novels written in the mid to late 1920s, established Dashiel Hammett’s reputation as one of the finest crime writers of the century.
The Continental Op is of below-average height and above-average weight, but is willing and able to mix it up with whatever ruffians he encounters on his assignments. Those assignments often look benign at first, but turn sinister in a hurry. Although based in San Francisco, the Op’s assignments take him all over California (“The Golden Horseshoe,” “The Gutting of Couffignal”), to Arizona (“Corkscrew”), and even to the Balkans (“This King Business”). Where the Op excels is at listening to a client, witness, or perpetrator, and identifying the inconsistencies and holes in their statements—inconsistencies and holes that readers rarely notice until the Op points them out.
The Continental Op stories, with two exceptions, originally appeared in Black Mask, the pulp magazine started in 1920 that also launched the careers of Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and other legendary crime writers.