The Continental Op Series / The Dain Curse / Private Eye / Dashiell Hammett

Before Sam Spade, before Philip Marlowe, before Mike Hammer, before Lew Archer and before every hard-boiled detective in crime literature, there was the Continental Op. Who was he? No one knows, because Dashiell Hammett never gives his name. He is a private detective and agent who works in the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency. He reports to the old man, is short and fat (by his own description) but very tough, as these stories show. We see the Op solving crimes, mostly murders, in and around San Francisco and Northern California, while being shot at, assaulted, and dispensing punishment better than he receives it.