In 1915, a 20-year-old man, frustrated with one unsatisfactory job after another, answered an ad in a Baltimore newspaper. A company was looking for bright, experienced salesmen--an "excellent opportunity for right man to connect with first-class house." Young Dashiell Hammett soon learned that the ad wasn't for salesmen; it was for private detectives. The job started him on the road to what was to be a successful career as an "op" (or operative) and, later, a hugely successful author of mysteries and detective stories. In The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett, Nathan Ward (Dark Harbor) shows us how Hammett transformed from Pinkerton man to writer.
The company's symbol was an unblinking eye with the motto "We Never Sleep." Hammett loved being a "private eye." He got $21 a week: "I liked gumshoeing... better than anything I had done before." Ward demonstrates how the agency "helped form the writer he became as surely as working at a newspaper might have." Ward's extensive research led him to vast Pinkerton files and the reports ops wrote about their cases. Though Hammett's background is widely known, few primary sources link him directly to the agency, so Ward extrapolates from the simple style and investigative content of the Pinkerton reports to demonstrate how they influenced both Hammett's prose style and subject matter.
Hammett has been quoted as saying "All my characters were based on people I've known personally, or known about." Hardboiled crime novel fans will find Ward's research into what it meant to Hammett to be an actual detective before he wrote about them quite fascinating. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher