Hammett, (Samuel) Dashiell (1894-1961)

US crime novelist. He introduced the ‘hard-boiled’ detective character into fiction and attracted a host of imitators, with works including The Maltese Falcon (1930, filmed 1941), The Glass Key (1931, filmed 1942), and his most successful novel, the light-hearted The Thin Man (1932, filmed 1934). His Marxist politics were best expressed in Red Harvest (1929), which depicts the corruption of capitalism in ‘Poisonville’.

Hammett was a former Pinkerton detective agent. In 1951 he was imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to testify during the McCarthy era of anticommunist witch hunts. He lived with the dramatist Lillian Hellman for the latter half of his life.