{"id":163,"date":"2015-05-27T20:30:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T01:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/?p=163"},"modified":"2015-05-27T20:30:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T01:30:10","slug":"happy-birthday-dashiell-hammett-1894-1961","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/happy-birthday-dashiell-hammett-1894-1961\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/hammett_redux.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-35 alignright\" alt=\"hammett_redux\" src=\"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/hammett_redux-282x300.jpg\" width=\"282\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/hammett_redux-282x300.jpg 282w, http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/hammett_redux.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 282px) 100vw, 282px\" \/><\/a>Dashiell Hammett was born on this day in 1894.\u00a0 Hammett was arguably the greatest writer of detective fiction in the 20th century.\u00a0 His lean prose and hardboiled style defined a genre.\u00a0 Often imitated, he was rarely equaled.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s rather surprising that his reputation is built on such a small body of work.\u00a0 Hammett started out writing for the pulps, particularly <em>Black Mask<\/em>.\u00a0 His best known creation was Sam Spade, who was immortalized by Humphrey Bogart in the third film adaptation of <em>The Maltese Falcon<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>But it was his earlier creation, an unnamed operative of the Continental Detective Agency that built his reputation.\u00a0 Narrating his own adventures, the Continental Op&#8217;s lean, first-person style created a fictional icon, that of the cynical, hardboiled, first-person PI story.<\/p>\n<p>Hammett was able to bring such verisimilitude to his work because he&#8217;d been a Pinkerton operative.\u00a0 He once said that all of his stories were true.\u00a0 If anyone has written a book (or a Ph.D. thesis) on that topic, I&#8217;d love to see it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, pour yourself a shot of something good, raise your glass to Hammett&#8217;s memory and legacy, and sit back with one of his books.\u00a0 You won&#8217;t be disappointed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dashiell Hammett was born on this day in 1894.\u00a0 Hammett was arguably the greatest writer of detective fiction in the 20th century.\u00a0 His lean prose and hardboiled style defined a genre.\u00a0 Often imitated, he was rarely equaled. It&#8217;s rather surprising that his reputation is built on such a small body of work.\u00a0 Hammett started out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,15,6],"tags":[52,85,36,53,54,86],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashiell-hammett","category-private-investigators","category-the-maltese-falcon","tag-birthday","tag-dashiell-hammett","tag-humphrey-bogart","tag-sam-spade","tag-the-continental-op","tag-the-maltese-falcon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P58L-2D","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}