Kerry Schooley wrote:
> As for Hammett, I too thought his time as a Pink was
generally thought to
> have influenced his work more than his war
experiences. And that it was
> their activities as strike-breakers and servants of
capital, not their
> crime-fighting, that influenced his outlook. Doesn't
Hammett tend to deal
> with class issues, mostly relations between the
lower and middle classes?
I
> thought The Thin Man was an Americanization of the
British cosy, treating
> matters of crime among the rich with superficial wit
and whimsey. Maybe
I'm
> thinking more of the subsequent movies.
************************* Of the few Marlowe and Con Op
novels I've read, the clients are rich, but both detectives
deal with low lifes in solving their cases.
I think that one of the strongest Pinkerton influences on
Hammett might not have been his experience as much as the
literature, such as Alan Pinkerton's series which included
MOLLY MAGUIRES. Purportedly non- fiction, the idea of the
hardboiled detective, violent and riding the hairy edge of
legality, gets a fairly good fleshing out decades before Daly
and Hammett published.
miker
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