::READERS REVIEWS::

As Smooth as Heroin, Coursing Through Your Veins - An overlooked treasure, THE DAIN CURSE is usually overshadowed by Dashiell Hammett's better known books, THE MALTESE FALCON and THE THIN MAN. This is unfortunate. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I think this book holds its own very well against its better known brethren.

Perhaps it is the structure of the book, broken into three sections loosely tied together, THE DAIN CURSE features Hammett's best detective, the portly and nameless Continental Op. Called in to investigate diamonds stolen from the elderly Edgar Leggett, the Op soon learns of the curse which mysteriously follows the family and which also, incidentally, leaves a lot of people dead.

The Op also recognizes that Leggett's beautiful daughter, Gabrielle, holds the key to the mystery. That Gabrielle is, plainly put, crazy, doesn't make the situation any easier. An apostle of a hocus pocus religious cult in San Francisco as well as a heroin addict, Gabrielle ties the three self-contained stories of THE DAIN CURSE together, providing an edgy line of continuity for the Op to follow.

From cult houses to breezy seaside towns more dangerous than they appear, THE DAIN CURSE provides Hammett plenty of opportunity to show off his skills at producing maximum effect with a minimum of words. Like all of his works, Hammett writes with the effect of short powerful jabs, constantly forcing the reader to keep his guard up while producing, paradoxically, beautiful images that capture the reader's imagination despite (indeed, because of) their brutality. In the hands of a lesser writer, the three stories of THE DAIN CURSE would have felt disjointed and artificial. Hammett, though, makes the best of both worlds, producing enjoyable shorter works and tying them together into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The Reviewers Are Wrong - I have read the overwhelming majority of Hammett's fiction, and I really think this is as good as any. It is different, granted, but it is not wholly unlike some of his earlier stories. I think a mistake a lot of people make is in comparing this book to RED HARVEST, the Op tale which just preceded this. But they are about different things. THE DAIN CURSE has a similar feel to early stories like "The Tenth Clew" or "The Golden Horseshoe", but is, of course, about strange things. But I think it displays some of the most intense "moments" of the Op's life; e.g., his mock-rescue of Gabrielle from the Temple with Eric Collinson in Part 1 and subsequent automobile accident; the discovery. of Eric Collinson's corpse in Part 3. Subtle, but still intense.

Furthermore, the way it's divided up, far from making it a "disconnected" novel, makes me think of it as a kind of trilogy of novellas. Each part is somewhat self-contained, but the later ones depend on the first one. Also, as Steven Marcus noted parenthetically in his Introduction to the collection, THE CONTINENTAL OP, the CURSE is the book in which Hammett fleshes out a lot of his going back and forth between what's reality and what's fiction, how they overlap, contaminate each other, and so forth.

But you can see, definitely, that he's leaning toward the mythic element he was searching for and found in THE MALTESE FALCON. Anyways, I think that, with the FALCON, the CURSE is one of Hammett's most intellectual (in the sense of philosophic, abstract) works.

THE CONTINENTAL OP AT WORK - Dashiel Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective. However, on the way to creating these literary works of art Hammett did journeyman's work at the detective genre in various pulp detective magazines. The Dain Curse seems to be at the tail end of that period.

The unnamed universal Continental Operative who is the central character of the story (and others, as well) is the prototype for Hammett's later named detectives. He has all the characteristics that mark a noir detective-tough, resourceful, undaunted, and incorruptible with a sense of honor to friend and foe alike that sets him apart from earlier detectives. However the plot line here is not as strong as in his latter work. Oh sure, there is murder and other crimes and plenty of sub-plots on the way to the solution and some less than savory although otherwise bourgeois characters to muddle up the Op's well laid plans. However, unless you are fairly familiar with 1920's `lost generation' hijinks there is less sympathy here for victims and villains alike than the later work. Religious cults, drugs, ennui, etc. have lost their cutting edge as material for dramatic tension. Still anytime you can get your hands on a Hammett book-do it.

"...he always got a lot of fun out of acting like the other half of a half-wit." - When a Continental Detective Agency operative is called in by an insurance company to investigate the theft of eight loose diamonds, he quickly realizes that there is more to this case than meets the eye. Something very strange is going on, and murder after murder seems to be swirling around young Gabrielle Leggett. Is there really a curse attached to her blood, a curse upon all of the Dains? It just might be true!

I love detective stories, and read them all the time. But, Dashiell Hammett is not your everyday mystery writer; he's the originator of the hardboiled detective story. This book was first published in 1929, and it is a great read. I love the characters, and the way that they interact. But, even better is the dialogue, including the quote above!

Overall, I think that this is a great story. If you like tough, two-fisted crime fiction, then this is the book for you. It's a great book by the king of his genre!

not quite up to snuff - I think this is the weakest of Hammet's novels. It is a bit predictable and the whole curse thing is a little silly. Nevertheless, you should read it if you are a big Hammet fan, because he wrote so little.

THE CONTINENTAL OP AT WORK - Dashiel Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective. However, on the way to creating these literary works of art Hammett did journeyman's work at the detective genre in various pulp detective magazines. The Dain Curse seems to be at the tail end of that period.

The unnamed universal Continental Operative who is the central character of the story (and others, as well) is the prototype for Hammett's later named detectives. He has all the characteristics that mark a noir detective-tough, resourceful, undaunted, and incorruptible with a sense of honor to friend and foe alike that sets him apart from earlier detectives. However the plot line here is not as strong as in his latter work. Oh sure, there is murder and other crimes and plenty of sub-plots on the way to the solution and some less than savory although otherwise bourgeois characters to muddle up the Op's well laid plans. However, unless you are fairly familiar with 1920's "lost generation" hijinks there is less sympathy here for victims and villains alike than the later work. Religious cults, drugs, ennui, etc. have lost their cutting edge as material for dramatic tension. Still anytime you can get your hands on a Hammett book-do it.

Needless to say you need a scorecard to tell who is on the level and who is not, including the people who hire said average private detective. The twist and turns as Op tries to mix and match with the various interests at play drive the drama of the film. As I mentioned in a recent review of Hammett's Red Harvest if you want a well-thought out story, although not as memorable as The Maltese Falcon or the The Thin Man, that is also well-written, although without the numerous unforgettable lines of the above-mentioned novels, from a member of the second echelon of the American literary pantheon, this one is for you.