Dashiell Hammett: Crime Stories and Other Writings (Library of America)In the stories and novellas he wrote for Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, Dashiell Hammett took the detective story and turned it into a medium for capturing the jarring textures and revved up cadences of modern American life. In this volume, The Library of America collects the finest of these stories: twenty four in all, along with some revealing essays and an earlier version of his novel The Thin Man. Mixing melodramatic