RE: Below
I was counting *Blood Money* as his 6th novel. It was roughly
half the
length of the other 2 Op novels (*Blood Money* consisted of 2
serialized
installments, "The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money,"
while *Red
Harvest* and *The Dain Curse* consisted of 4). It was first
published
in hardcover under the title *Blood Money* in the 1940s. It
has
appeared in paperback as *The Big Knockover* (not to be
confused with
the 1966 short story collection), *$106,000 Blood Money*, and
*Blood
Money*. The British edition of the omnibus volume *The Novels
of
Dashiell Hammett*, included *Blood Money*, although the
American edition
did not, and the two installments that made up *Blood Money*
were
instead printed as autonomous short stories in Lillian
Hellman's
aforementioned *The Big Knockover and Other Stories*
collection. In
*Dashiell Hammett - A Casebook*, William F. Nolan refers to
*Blood
Money* as Hammett's "first novel" since it was serialized in
*BM* prior
to the other two Op novels, though it wasn't published as a
book until
many years later. The two-part serial was written by Hammett
in
response to Shaw's suggestion that he try a novel-length
work. However,
because Shaw disliked serials, Hammett had to write each
installment so
that it could stand on its own as a short story. He was under
the same
constraint in writing *Red Harvest*, *The Dain Curse*, and
*The Glass
Key*. Only for the *The Maltese Falcon* would Shaw relent
in
"no-serials" policy. *The Thin Man* was not serialized in
*BM*. - Jim
Doherty
Okay, I just got up and still not really awake, but what's
Hammett's
sixth? Woman in the Dark? Or Big Knockover? These probably
qualify (I
forget the official word-count for a novel from college
English), but I
always thought of Hammett as having written 5 novels, plus a
few
novellas, or "short novels" as they are called in the
subtitle to Big
Knockover.
Mark
--UNS_gsauns2_2944278663--
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.