The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett by Nathan Ward - review by Ian Sansom

Ian Sansom

Pride of Pinkerton’s

The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett

By

Bloomsbury 214pp £16.99
 

His ‘jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down – from high flat temples – in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.’ Sound familiar? Sam Spade? Samuel D Hammett.

It’s always an error, of course, to associate authors too closely with their characters, but some authors come much closer than others and positively dare us to make the association: everywhere you look in literature, it seems, there are writers challenging us to interrogate their alter egos, doppelgängers, self-portraits and sock puppets. Zuckerman, are you really Philip Roth? Birkin, are you Lawrence? Maggie Tulliver – is that you, George?

Samuel D – Dashiell – Hammett provides readers with at least two possible self-portraits, Sam Spade and the Continental Op, the hard-boiled heroes of his most famous novels and short stories, Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931). There’s also his

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

RLF - March

A Mirror - Westend

Follow Literary Review on Twitter