Part of Series
This is from the Black Mask introduction: "You'll have the time of your life trying to solve this crime before you get to the end of the (short) story. You'll think some of the characters don't act logically, but when you figure it out afterward you'll decide they were all pretty wise." Mr. Frederick Glover tells the Op that his father, a widower, withdrew $10,000 from his bank on Saturday. And that his butler, Barton, found his father on Sunday stabbed to death with the money gone. Librarian's note #1: this entry is for the story, Arson Plus. Entries for collections of short stories and the other individual stories can be found elsewhere on Goodreads. There are a total of 28 short stories plus one incomplete; they can all be found by searching Goodreads for: a Continental Op Short Story. Librarian's note #2: there are also two Continental Op novels, Red Harvest (also known as The Cleansing of Poisonville), and The Dain Curse.
Author
Also wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett Dashiell Hammett, an American, wrote highly acclaimed detective fiction, including The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934). Samuel Dashiell Hammett authored hardboiled novels and short stories. He created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) among the enduring characters. In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in the New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell...
