The Continental Op

First Dell mapback edition

The Continental Op is a fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett. A private investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office, he never gives his name and so is known only by his job description.

Profile

The Continental Op is a master of deceit in the exercise of his profession. In "$106,000 Blood Money", for instance, the Op is confronted with two dilemmas: shall he expose a corrupt fellow detective, thereby hurting the reputation of his agency; and shall he also allow an informant to collect the $106,000 reward in a big case even though he is morally certain — but cannot prove — that the informant has murdered one of his agency's clients? The Op resolves his two problems neatly by manipulating events so that the corrupt detective and the informant get into an armed confrontation in which both are killed.

Decades of witnessing human cruelty, misery, and ruin, as well as being instrumental in sending hundreds of people to jail, or to the gallows, have greatly weakened the Op's natural sympathy with his fellow men. He fears becoming like his boss, "The Old Man", whom he describes as "a shell, without any human feelings whatsoever".

In the penultimate chapter of The Dain Curse, a female client, whose life the Op has saved three times, while also curing her of morphine addiction, says to him:

"You came in just now, and then I saw -"

She stopped.

"What?"

"A monster. A nice one, an especially nice one to have around when you're in trouble, but a monster just the same, without any human foolishness like love in him, and - What's the matter? Have I said something I shouldn't?"

The Op can be regarded as a protoype for the hardboiled detective exemplified in such characters as Hammett's Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, and others.

Works

The Continental Op made his debut in an October 1923 issue of Black Mask, making him one of the earliest hard-boiled private detective characters to appear in the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. He appeared in 36 short stories, all but two of which appeared in Black Mask.

In 1927, Hammett began writing linked stories, which formed the basis for his first two novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, both released in 1929. Two other stories, "The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money" were published as Blood Money in 1943. Hammett also wrote a two-story sequence in the summer of 1924 consisting of "The House in Turk Street" and "The Girl with the Silver Eyes." These were recently published (along with The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Blood Money) in a Modern Library edition, though they are not dubbed officially as a novel as was Blood Money.

Of the 28 stories not a part of Red Harvest or The Dain Curse, 26 are available in one of three collections from Vintage Crime, The Big Knockover (1966), The Continental Op (1974), and Nightmare Town (1999), and/or the Library of America collection Crime Stories and Other Writings (2001).

A number of collections of Hammett stories, both books collecting Continental Op stories (The Continental Op, The Return of the Continental Op) and others with miscellaneous Hammett stories, were published as Dell mapbacks. These collections all contained introductory essays by Ellery Queen. A more recent edition contains an astute short introduction by Columbia professor Steven Marcus.

In 1978, The Dain Curse was made into a six-hour CBS television miniseries starring James Coburn. For the miniseries, the Op was named Hamilton Nash (his creator's name spelled "sideways.")

Complete list of stories

• "Arson Plus" (Black Mask, Oct. 1, 1923) (as Peter Collinson) (CS)
• "Slippery Fingers" (Black Mask, 15 Oct. 1923) (as Peter Collinson) (CS)
• "Crooked Souls" (“The Gatewood Caper”) (Black Mask, Oct. 15, 1923) (BK) (CS)
• "It” (“The Black Hat That Wasn't There”) (Black Mask, Nov. 1, 1923)
• "Bodies Piled Up" (“House Dick”) (Black Mask, December 1, 1923) (NT)
• "The Tenth Clew" (Black Mask, January 1, 1924) (CO) (CS) (RO)
• "Night Shots" (Black Mask, February 1924) (NT)
• "Zigzags of Treachery" (Black Mask, March 1, 1924) (NT) (CS)
• "One Hour" (Black Mask, April 1924) (NT) (RO)
• "The House in Turk Street" (Black Mask, April 15, 1924) (CO) (CS)
• "The Girl with Silver Eyes" (Black Mask, June 1924) (CO) (CS)
• "Women, Politics and Murder” (“Death on Pine Street”) (Black Mask, September 1924) (NT) (CS)
• "The Golden Horseshoe" (Black Mask, November 1924) (CO) (CS)
• "Who Killed Bob Teal?" (True Detective Stories, November 1924) (NT)
• "Mike, Alec or Rufus?” (“Tom, Dick or Harry”) (Black Mask, January 1925) (NT)
• "The Whosis Kid" (Black Mask, March 1925) (CO) (CS) (RO)
• "The Scorched Face" (Black Mask, May 1925) (BK) (CS)
• "Corkscrew" (Black Mask, September 1925) (BK)
• "Dead Yellow Women" (Black Mask, November 1925) (BK) (CS)
• The Gutting of Couffignal (Black Mask, December 1925) (BK) (CS) (RO)
• "The Creeping Siamese" (Black Mask, March 1926) (CS)
• "The Big Knockover" (Black Mask, February 1927) (BK) (CS)
• "$106,000 Blood Money" (Black Mask, May 1927) (BK) (CS)
• "The Main Death" (Black Mask, June 1927) (CO) (CS)
• Stories republished as Red Harvest
  • "The Cleansing of Poisonville" (Black Mask, November 1927)
  • "Crime Wanted - Male or Female" (Black Mask, December 1927)
  • "Dynamite" (Black Mask, January 1928)
  • "The 19th Murder" (Black Mask, February 1928)
• "This King Business" (Mystery Stories, January 1928) (BK) (CS)
• Stories republished as The Dain Curse
  • "Black Lives" (Black Mask, November 1928)
  • "The Hollow Temple" (Black Mask, December 1928)
  • "Black Honeymoon" (Black Mask, January 1929)
  • "Black Riddle" (Black Mask, February 1929)
• "Fly Paper" (Black Mask, August 1929) (BK) (CS)
• "The Farewell Murder" (Black Mask, February 1930) (CO) (CS)
• "Death and Company" (Black Mask, November 1930) (RO)

BK = These stories appear in The Big Knockover

CO = These stories appear in The Continental Op

RO = These stories appear in The Return Of the Continental Op

NT = These stories appear in Nightmare Town

CS = These stories appear in Crime Stories and Other Writings

See also

• Detective fiction
• List of Fallen Angels episodes ("Fly Paper" episode)