Miker,
Re your question below:
> one of the things i found interesting was that
i
> thought hammett wrote five novels: DAIN
CURSE,
> GLASS
> KEY, RED HARVEST, THIN MAN, and MALTESE FALCON.
now
> i see another one mentioned, BLOOD MONEY, aka
BIG
> KNOCKOVER. don't know why that one escaped me
for
> so long.
The novel BLOOD MONEY, like the other two Continental Op
novels RED HARVEST & THE DAIN CURSE, was composed by
putting together some related short stories into a single
book, what William DeAndrea called a "fix-up" in his
ENCYCLOPEDIA MYSTERIOSA.
BLOOD MONEY consisted of only two short stories, rather than
four like HARVEST and CURSE. The short stories were "The Big
Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money." Though BLOOD MONEY (or
its two semi-autonomous installments) made its magazine
appearance before any other Hammett novel, it wasn't
published as a separate novel until the '40s. The two stories
are included in the Hellman-edited short story collection THE
BIG KNOCKOVER, so all you have to do id find that collection
and read the last two stories back to back and you'll have
read BLOOD MONEY.
Because BLOOD MONEY consisted on only two installments rather
than four or five (like Hammett's other novels), it's very
short, no more than 40,000 words. Also, when it was finally
published as a novel, it was not by a prestige press like
Knopf. That, and the fact that the two installments are
included in the Hellman-edited collection (one of them is the
title story), has kept BLOOD MONEY from being generally
included in the roster of Hammett novels.
Curiously, in a legal settlement between the estate of
Hellman, and the heirs of Hammett, the Hellman estate
retained control of the novels, and Hammett's heirs to the
short stories. BLOOD MONEY was regarded as two short stories,
rather than as a novel for the purposes of this
setllement.
JIM DOHERTY
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