«Great crime fiction started with Hammett»

James Ellroy

«He is master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer»

BOSTON GLOBE

«His name remains one of the most important and recognisable in the crime fiction genre. Hammett set the standard for much of the work that would follow»

INDEPENDENT

«One of the foremost practitioners of the hard-boiled detective story»

SCOTSMAN

«Hammett's prose is clean and entirely unique. His characters are as sharp and economically defined as any in American literature»

NEW YORK TIMES

«Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best»

THE TIMES

«He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used»

Raymond Chandler