Dashiell Hammett

Raised in Philadelphia and Baltimore, Dashiell Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several jobs before becoming an operative for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1915. After serving as a sergeant in WWI and returning to the Pinkerton’s for a while after that, he began his career as a writer. His first story was published in 1922, and in the twelve years that followed he wrote numerous novels, screenplays, and short stories, and in many ways his writing, with its hard-boiled authenticity, established the genre of the noir detective novel. He ceased writing after 1934 and focused instead on political activism. A determined anti-fascist, he was a member of the Communist Party USA and, after pulling strings to serve again in WWII (despite the injuries he incurred fighting in the first World War), he refused to provide the U.S. courts information about other Communist party members that could have led to their arrest or harassment. For refusing, he was sentenced to five months in a federal prison. Unpopular with the American public because of his controversial political views, Hammett spent the last ten years of his life as a recluse living in his country house. In 1961 he died of lung cancer.