{"product_id":"the-lost-detective-becoming-dashiell-hammett","title":"The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett","description":"\u003cp\u003eA 2016 Edgar Award Nominee  Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer  before his attachment to Lillian Hellman and blacklisting during the McCarthy era  and his subsequent downward spiral  Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family  Hammett left school at fourteen and held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative in 1915 and  with time off in 1918 to serve at the end of World War I  he remained with the agency until 1922  participating alike in the banal and dramatic action of an operative. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons--but it may well have prompted one of Americas most acclaimed writing careers.  While Hammetts life on center stage has been well-documented  the question of how he got there has not. That largely overlooked phase is the subject of Nathan Wards enthralling The Lost Detective. Hammetts childhood  his life in San Francisco  and especially his experience as a detective deeply informed his writing and his characters  from the nameless Continental Op  hero of his stories and early novels  to Sam Spade and Nick Charles. The success of his many stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask following his departure from the Pinkertons led him to novels; he would write five between 1929 and 1934  two of them (The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man) now American classics. Though he inspired generations of writers  from Chandler to Connelly and all in between  after The Thin Man he never finished another book  a painful silence for his devoted readers; and his popular image has long been shaped by the remembrance of Hellman  who knew him after his literary reputation had been made. Based on original research across the country  The Lost Detective is the first book to illuminate Hammetts transformation from real detective to great American detective writer  throwing brilliant new light on one of Americas most celebrated and remembered novelists and his world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44986238271541,"sku":"ByrdShop_080277640X","price":27.37,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780802776402.jpg?v=1770893796","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-lost-detective-becoming-dashiell-hammett","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}