“Half the jobs that come to a private detective are like this one: three or four days–and often as many weeks–have passed since the crime was committed. The police work on the job until they are stumped; then the injured party calls in a private sleuth, dumps him down on a trail that is old and cold and badly trampled, and expects–Oh, well! I picked out this way of making a living so …”

As a detective with the San Francisco branch of the Continental Detective Agency, the Continental Op has worked all kinds of cases, from gruesome murders to high-stakes robberies. A short, private man with a quick mind and quicker feet, Dashiell Hammett’s nameless sleuth may not be who you picture when you think of a private eye, but he is certainly the man you want on the job.

In the Best Cases of The Continental Op, an original compilation of eight stories from Skyboat Media, the Op walks, stalks, and runs down the steep streets of San Francisco to solve crimes of blackmail, murder, stolen identities, and arson, and each story contains so many twists and turns you’ll be hooked until the very (surprising) end …

Full Contents:

Introduction by Alison Belle Bews”Arson Plus””Slippery Fingers””The Tenth Clew””Crooked Souls””Bodies Piled Up””The Golden Horseshoe””Death on Pine Street (Women, Politics, and Murder)””Zigzags of Treachery

Detective-story master Dashiell Hammett gives us yet another unforgettable read in Red Harvest.

When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty–even if that meant taking on an entire town.

Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.

Dashiell Hammett was a crime writer who elevated the genre to true literature, and The Thin Man was Hammett#8217;s last-and most successful-novel. Following the enormous success of #8220;The Thin Man#8221; movie in 1934, Hammett was commissioned to write stories for additional films. He wrote two full-length novellas for the films that became #8220;After the Thin Man#8221; and #8220;Another Thin Man.#8221; Hammett brought back his classic characters, retired private investigator Nick Charles and his former debutante wife Nora, in these two fully satisfying #8220;Thin Man#8221; stories, written with classic, barbed Hammett dialogue.Neither of these stories has been previously published (except for a partial in a small magazine 25 years ago). Now together in Return of the Thin Man, these hugely entertaining novellas are destined to remain essential listening for Hammett#8217;s millions of fans and a new generation of mystery lovers the world over.The recording features Peter Ganim as Nick, Nicola Barber as Nora, and Scott Brick as the narrator. Additional character voices are provided by Emily Bauer, Dan Bittner, Cynthia Darlow, Richard Ferrone, Eliza Foss, Emma Galvin, Johnny Heller, Pete Larkin, Bill Lobley, Carol Monda, Rich Orlow, Paula Parker, Vinnie Penna, with Zane Birdwell, Nathan Rosborough, Iris McElroy, Barbara Vlahides, Fametta Sawyer, Tim Bader, Tyrrell Harrell, Kevin Fecu, and Alan Winter.

The Continental Op is a short, squat, and utterly unsentimental tank of a private detective. Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young, wealthy, and a devotee of morphine and religious cults. She has an unfortunate effect on the people around her: they have a habit of dying violently. Is Gabrielle the victim of a family curse? Or is the truth about her weirder and infinitely more dangerous? The Dain Curse is one of the Continental Op’s most bizarre cases and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.

Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett’s tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.

A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel.

Dashiell Hammett is best known as both pioneer and master of American hard-boiled detective fiction, but these dozen and a half stories both affirm that reputation and present him in a different light. Along with the full-length screen treatments On the Make (which became the movie Mr. Dynamite, 1935) and The Kiss-Off (the basis for City Streets, starring Sylvia Sydney and Gary Cooper, 1931), this collection includes never before and rarely published stories that explore failed romance, courage in the face of uncertainty, hypocrisy, and crass opportunism.Collected and edited by Hammett’s granddaughter, Julie Rivett, and noted Hammett scholar and biographer Richard Layman, The Hunter and Other Stories is a trove of priceless literary gems from an American master storyteller.Donna Postel reads the introduction, commentaries, and afterword; Ray Chase reads the sections ldquo;Crimerdquo; and ldquo;Screen Storiesrdquo; and the appendix; Brian Holsopple reads the section ldquo;Menrdquo;; and Stephen Bowlby reads the section ldquo;Men and Women.rdquo;

The definitive masterpiece of the hard-boiled detective genre, The Maltese Falcon first appeared in the pages of Black Mask magazine in 1929 and was almost immediately acknowledged as not only a great crime novel but an enduring masterpiece of American fiction.

Tough, cynical PI Sam Spade–a man who, as his creator explained, is “able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with”–is hired by the story’s irresistible femme fatale, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, to locate the client’s sister by tailing her companion. Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, takes on the assignment, and quickly both he and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner’s death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters–all of them after a legendary statuette of a falcon fashioned long ago for King Charles V of Spain.

Made of gold and encrusted with jewels, the falcon is worth a fortune. Missing for centuries, it resurfaced in Paris in 1911, covered in black enamel to disguise its value, and then disappeared again until it was traced to Constantinople–and now, it would seem, to Spade’s own backyard.

The Maltese Falcon is the definitive masterpiece of the hard-boiled detective genre. It introduces legendary PI Sam Spade, a loner who follows his own code and the rules of the street as he zeros in on his partner’s killer and the famous jewel-encrusted bird. Humphrey Bogart immortalized the tough-guy detective in the classic 1941 film.

The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New York’s coolest crime-solving couple.

Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later, a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick’s client.

Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities and cold-blooded murder.