Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett May 27 1894 January 10 1961 was an American writer of hardboiled detective novels and short stories He was also a screenwriter and political activist Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade The Maltese Falcon Nick and Nora Charles The Thin Man the Continental Op Red Harvest and The Dain Curse and the comic strip character Secret Agent X9 Hammett is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time In his obituary in The New York Times he was described as the dean of the hardboiled school of detective fiction Time included Hammetts 1929 novel Red Harvest on its list of the 100 best Englishlanguage novels published between 1923 and 2005 In 1990 the Crime Writers Association picked three of his five novels for their list of The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time Five years later four out of five of his novels made The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time as selected by the Mystery Writers of America His novels and stories also had a significant influence on films including the genres of private eyedetective fiction mystery thrillers and film noir Description above from the Wikipedia article Dashiell Hammett licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia