A short biography
The Continental Op
Blood Money
Red Harvest
The Dain Curse
The Maltese Falcon:
The novel
The movie
The 75th anniversary
The Glass Key
The Thin Man
Woman in the Dark
The short story collections
The novels in one
volume
Books about Hammett
Interview with Hammett authority George J. "Rhino" Thompson
Chronology of Hammett's fiction
Hammett's army days
"Dashiell Hammett Place"
Hammett's Post Street
apartment:
A photo tour (2005)
Declared a
landmark (2005)
The Flood Building
Links to other Hammett sites
Contact Mike
mikehumbert.com homepage
This site is dedicated to all the people like Don Herron, Bill Arney, Richard Layman, William F. Nolan, Josephine Hammett Marshall, Julie M. Rivett, Steven Marcus, Joe Gores and others who have kept 1920s San Francisco in the here and now.
Special thanks to Vince Emery for his many helpful contributions to this website.
Entire website copyright 2003, 2004 & 2005 by Mike Humbert.
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Like Red Harvest, The Dain Curse was originally spread over four issues of Black Mask, between October 1928 and January 1929. Knopf released it in hardback the following July. Despite considerable reworking, it remains Hammett’s most disjointed and episodic novel.
In 1978, The Dain Curse was made into a TV miniseries, which was surprisingly faithful to the book, with a few notable exceptions:
1) The setting was no longer San Francisco.
2) The Continental Agency was renamed the Dickerson Agency
3) The nameless, chubby detective was transformed into mustachioed James Coburn, bearing a strong resemblance to Dash Hammett, and calling himself Hamilton Nash.
2) Grosset & Dunlap, 1931 (hardback with dust jacket)
3) Pocket, 1945 (paperback)
4) Knopf, 1945 (hardcover with dust jacket. Black Widow edition)
6) Perma, 1966 (paperback)
7) Dell, 1968 (paperback)
8) Vintage, 1972 (paperback)
10) Large Type edition (details unknown)
11) Pan, 1975 (paperback)
12) Vintage, 1978 (paperback)
14) Vintage Crime, 1989 (trade paperback)
15) Orion, 2002 (paperback)
