Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett was born in St Mary's County, Maryland, in 1894. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He left school at fourteen, and after that held a variety of jobs, including messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, timekeeper, yardman, machine operator and stevedore, until he finally became an operative for the legendary Pinkerton's Detective Agency.

The First World War, however, in which Hammett served as a sergeant, interrupted his sleuthing and shattered his health. When he was finally discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work, and subsequently turned to the writing of detective fiction. Now regarded as one of the masters of the genre, Hammett has been a major influence on contemporary fiction. He died in 1961. The Big Knockover and Other Stories is also published by Penguin.