The American writer, Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on 27 May 1894 in St. Mary's County, Maryland, as the son of Richard Thomas and Annie Bond Dashiell Hammett. The father was at that time working as a politician and farmer and his wife was a trained nurse.

After the birth of their son, the couple from St. Mary's Counte moved first to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and later in the state of Maryland only to return to live in Baltimore. At the age of 14, Samuel Dashiell Hammett left school to help his parents with a job as a paperboy and courier. He then worked as an investigator for the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency in Baltimore.

During his participation in World War II, Dashiell Hammett fell ill with tuberculosis, of which he was to suffer the rest of his life. After his return from the war, he resumed his work for Pinkerton. However, since he was only on a very small salary, he ended his work as a private investigator. In 1920 he married Josephine Anna Dolan and the couple had daughters Mary Jane and Josephine. When in 1930 he wrote the book The Maltese Falcon, he dedicated this to his wife (For Jose).

After he met the playwright Lillian Hellman, he separated from his wife and had a relationship with her since 1931. His marriage to his wife, Josephine Anna Dolan, ended in 1937. Here, the private detective Sam Spade was not the first character that Dashiell Hammett invented. An unspecified named investigator detective Continental Op is the hero about which Hammett wrote a total of 30 stories. One of the most famous detectives in literary history, however, is without a doubt Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.

The five novels that Dashiell Hammett published between the years 1929 to 1934 are among the classics of the detective genre. Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man are among these.

The stories the author were mostly published in the Black Mask Magazine, one of the so-called popular pulp magazines in the 1950’s, in which not only detective and crime stories were published, but also stories of adventure, westerns and fantasy.

In World War II, Dashiell Hammett voluntarily reported for military service in 1942. During his three years' service with the rank of Master Sargent, he served as editor of an Army newspaper in the Aleutian Islands, a chain of islands between North America and Asia. The following year he became president of the civil rights movement, Civil Rights Congress, which was founded in the same year.

During the McCarthy Era, in which real or perceived communists were followed between 1947 and 1956, Dashiell Hammett also fell under his political activity and because of his membership in the Communist Party since 1937 he was the focus of investigators. In 1951, Hammett was called in court to list the names of other members of the party, and he invoked his right not to testify. He was convicted of contempt of court for six-months in prison, of which he served five.

In the following years, Dashiell Hammett, who was still suffering from the effects of tuberculosis, lived in New York and taught at the School of Social Science the subject Creative Writing. After 1955 he suffered a massive heart attack, so the writer largely withdrawn. He was cared for by his girlfriend, Lillian Hellman.

The authority of the veterans granted the author who created one of the most famous detectives in the world, a small monthly pension as of 1959 and when he died on 10 January 1961 as a poor man with lung cancer, he was buried as a war veteran at the Arlington National Cemetery.

Together with Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett is one of the spiritual fathers of the Hardboiled Detective, the tough and realistic thrillers. Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade are not part of the classic detective stories of the Golden Age, like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, the British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. The life of Marlowe and Spade is characterized by fraud and violence. These two detectives do not shine by their morals.

Books by Dashiell Hammett

Red Harvest (February 1, 1929)

The Dain Curse (July 19, 1929)

The Maltese Falcon (February 14, 1930)

The Glass Key (April 24, 1931)

The Thin Man (January 8, 1934)