Gores, Joe

New York. 1975. September 1975. Putnam. 1st Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn & Tape-Repaired Dustjacket. 0399116003. 251 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Honi Werner. keywords: Mystery America Dashiell Hammett. FROM THE PUBLISHER - SAN FRANCISCO, 1928, is a corrupt city, owned by its politicians, its cops, its district attorney. A city where anything is for sale. And anybody. Except for one man. A private detective- turned-writer named Samuel Dashiell Hammett, once again manhunting because an old friend to whom he refused help has been brutally murdered. During his search through the teeming alleys of Chinatown, through the cathouses and speakeasies and gambling hells of the city, Hammett discovers that the years of writing have dulled his hunter's instincts, have made him fear death-and that failure to resharpen his long-unused skills as a private detective could end not only his life, but his chance for literary immortality. Joe Gores, like Dashiell Hammett, spent years as a private detective before becoming a novelist; only he could have conceived this stunning novel. He boldly probes the enigmas of the tough, moody, brilliant man who wrote such classics as THE MALTESE FALCON, THE CLASS KEY, and THE THIN MAN, and he probes the brawling, corrupt city where Hammett's Sam Spade and Continental Op lived and worked. His dialogue crackles and sparks with the wry, tough humor of the twenties. His characters are thinly disguised portraits of the men and women who shook and shaped this most fascinating of American cities. His plot, drawn from actual events in San Francisco s corrupt political past, casts harsh light on a stark and bloody era. HAMMETT is a novel of unusual brilliance-part thriller, part fictionalized history, part biography, all knife-edge suspense. In it a man's search for several kinds of truth leads him-and the reader-to ultimate revelations about the murderer within us all. inventory #4194 ISBN: 0399116003.