The Scoop on Detective Fiction

Credit for creating the first true detective probably belongs to Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), whose story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” pioneered the idea of a lone mastermind sifting clues and out-thinking everyone around him. The most popular fictional detective surely remains Sherlock Holmes, the London-based amateur sleuth created by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Dashiell Hammett transplanted the genteel British detective story to America and gave it an urban realism that would have baffled Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. In the 1920s and 1930s, Hammett wrote more than eighty short stories and five novels. His crisp style and vivid slang created a gritty, street-level realism that registered strongly with the public.

Often set in large, corrupt cities, Hammett stories tend to feature an independent-minded detective, a working man at odds with his violent society. His motivations-whether monetary reward, a search for truth, or the preservation of his integrity-remain for the reader to decide. In a phrase popularized by the great newspaperman Damon Runyon, a Hammett detective was “hardboiled”: fundamentally a good egg, but far from soft. Hammett’s genius lay in devising a style to match his masculine heroes. Hammett never wasted an adjective, refining a tightly visual vocabulary until everything inessential was boiled away. The stories are often set in large cities where graft and corruption are commonplace. The hard-boiled hero is usually a man at odds with society, whose motivation stems not from monetary reward but from a personal code and the search for truth.

“I’m one of the few – if there are any more – people moderately literate who take the detective story seriously. I don't mean that I necessarily take my own or anybody else's seriously – but the detective story as a form. Some day somebody's going to make ‘literature’ of it ... and I'm selfish enough to have my hopes.” -Dashiell Hammett, 1928

Hammett stories were popular in the pulps, his serialized novels found mainstream publishers, and filmmakers have enthusiastically adapted his work to the screen. He is credited with bringing detective fiction from pulp into the literary mainstream. His crisp writing style and use of slang brought the language of the streets to the page, creating an urban realism that registered strongly with the public. He developed his style by writing case reports during his stint as an operative for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. This “just the facts” approach colored his writing, creating highly readable, fast-moving stories. Hammett strove for the highest standard in dialogue, setting, and pacing.

Hammett employs a spare style with plain sentence structure and fairly accessible language. Conversations in his stories convey messages beyond the literal meaning of the page’s words. The pacing of Hammett’s writing and his penchant for hairpin plot turns are what endeared him to readers of the pulps, and later to millions of fans of detective fiction. The Maltese Falcon has an intricate series of plot twists, but the story is told in a straightforward, uncomplicated way. Hammett’s style has influenced a host of later writers of detective fiction, including Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Walter Mosley.

Excerpt taken from the National Endowment for the Arts Reader’s Guide. For more insider information on The Maltese Falcon, click here.