On The Fly

In this episode – The Hard-Boiled Detective . . . Welcome back to On the Fly, your dose of literary lightning! Just for fun, let’s continue our study of fictional detectives. Today, we're diving headfirst into the world of crime fiction and the man who practically invented a whole new subgenre: Dashiell Hammett. If you missed it, we examined Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes last week. However, if you’ve seen any of the Turner Classic movies with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, have you ever wondered who the author of those stories was? I never made that connection until this week when Lori said, "If you want to study detective fiction, look into Dashiell Hammett." "Who’s that?" I asked, "How do you know that name?" "You’ve seen The Maltese Falcon and the Thin Man; he’s the author of that genre–the Hard-Boiled Detective.“ Dashiell Hammett (1894 – 1961) wasn't your typical author.  Before pounding out tales on the typewriter, he spent yea...