When the Continental Op gets roused out of bed early on a Sunday morning, he isn’t too impressed. Especially when his contact on a missing person case is an excited and teary man overcome with worry. All the same, the Op begins looking into the mysterious circumstances under which a girl with silver eyes, the man's girlfriend, seems to have disappeared. It was introduced in 'Black Mask' this way: "Mr. Hammett has written some lively and unusual tales .. ; but for action, shrewd detective work, sheer interest and surprise, his latest, herewith, surpasses them all." Librarian's note #1: this entry is for the story, "Girl with the Silver Eyes." Entries for collections, and each of 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...
