Word: hammett
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...reader in a house full of books. At first I started with children's classics like Robinson Crusoe and Julie of the Wolves. Just as I was entering my teens, though, I discovered my father's collection of mystery novels. I snuck the works of Chandler, Hammett, and others up to my bedroom and read them under the covers late at night, when I was sure that my parents were asleep. Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, which he calls "a valediction in blood," left me sleepless and staring at the ceiling for weeks, sure that I would come...
...name is Detective Mike Hoolihan. And I am a woman, also." And with that satisfying jolt, we're off, as Amis once again bombards, delights, excites and irritates the reader with his hard-edged writing and warped spirit. Paying homage to the American tough-guy novelists of yore--Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler--Night Train pushes the boundaries of noir almost to the edge of darkness. The experiment does not always work, but this little book never gets boring...
...place where the chief pastimes were groping and bloodletting and where the main thing to remember was that only the strong survive. Eventually he was also a contributor to the liberal daily PM, which put him in the company of literary tough customers like Dorothy Parker and Dashiell Hammett and which reproduced Weegee's prints in a way that did justice to their tar-pit blacks...
...rest of her talents did not come together so readily. Hammett was crucial to her success. When she began writing plays, he typed them (in those days she was a $15-a-week manuscript reader; he was a famous author). He slaved over her first hit, The Children's Hour, giving her the plot, goading her to sharpen the language and making her exaggerated gambits more realistic. Meanwhile, his own fiction was languishing; weakened by drink and pulmonary disease, he published only one book, The Thin Man, after he met Hellman...
Worse was to follow. Though Hammett's will makes it clear he wanted half his literary estate to go to his daughter Josephine, she did not inherit anything until 30-odd years after his death in 1961--and well after Hellman's in 1984. Hellman simply expropriated the money. Mellen's theory is that she considered it a posthumous payment on Hammett's part for not having loved her enough...