james.doherty@gsa.gov
30 Aug 99 16:50:00 -0400
Re Michael's post below:
"Also, once I came across a copy of an old copy of something
called _Blood Money_ attributed to Hammett. I couldn't skim
through it because it was wrapped in plastic."
*Blood Money* was first appeared as two semi-serial
installments in *Black Mask* entitled "The Big Knockover" and
"$106,000 Blood Money," which told the story of a major
multiple bank robbery and its aftermath. The Op is the
detective who solves the case. It was the first full-length
novel Hammett ever wrote, preceding the magazine serial
versions of both *Red Harvest* and
*The Dain Curse* by a year or so. At that, it barely
qualified as a full-length novel, being only some forty to
fifty thousand words long.
Although it was Hammett's first novel, it was the last
published in book form. Paperback editions appeared under
both the *Big Knockover* title and the *$106,000 Blood Money*
title. Finally, the hardback edition, published, I believe,
by World, was entitled simply *Blood Money*. Dell reprints
used the same title and that's how it's usually referred to
today.
The two installments, written like most of Hammett's magazine
serial installments, so that they could stand on their own as
short stories as well as chapters in a longer work, hold down
the anchor postions in the Lillian Hellman-edited short story
collection *The Big Knockover* published by Random House in
1966. That's probably the easiest version to find. - Jim
Doherty
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