The Continental Op


The Continental Op is a fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett. He is a private investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office. The stories are all told in the first person and his name is never given.

Profile

The Continental Op is a master of deceit in the exercise of his occupation. In his 1927 Black Mask story "$106,000 Blood Money" the Op is confronted with two dilemmas: shall he expose a corrupt fellow detective, thereby hurting the reputation of his agency; and shall he also allow an informant to collect the $106,000 reward in a big case even though he is morally certain—but cannot prove—that the informant has murdered one of his agency's clients? The Op resolves his two problems neatly by manipulating events so that the corrupt detective and the informant get into an armed confrontation in which both are killed.
Decades of witnessing human cruelty, misery, and ruin, as well as being instrumental in sending hundreds of people to jail, or to the gallows, have greatly weakened the Op's natural sympathy with his fellow men. He fears becoming like his boss, "The Old Man", whom he describes as "a shell, without any human feelings whatsoever".
In the penultimate chapter of The Dain Curse, a female client, whose life the Op has saved three times, while also curing her of morphine addiction, says to him:
The Op is one of the first major hardboiled detectives later developed in such characters as Hammett's own Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer and others.

Works

The Continental Op made his debut in an October 1923 issue of Black Mask, making him one of the earliest hard-boiled private detective characters to appear in the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. He appeared in 36 short stories, all but two of which appeared in Black Mask.
In 1927, Hammett began writing linked stories, which formed the basis for his first two novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, both released in 1929. Two other stories, "The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money" were published as Blood Money in 1943. Hammett also wrote a two-story sequence in the summer of 1924 consisting of "The House on Turk Street" and "The Girl with the Silver Eyes". These were published in a Modern Library edition, though they are not officially called a novel as was Blood Money.
Of the 28 stories not a part of Red Harvest or The Dain Curse, 26 have been made available in one of three collections from Vintage Crime, The Big Knockover, The Continental Op, and Nightmare Town, and/or the Library of America collection Crime Stories and Other Writings.
In 2017, Vintage Crime published a complete collection of all 36 Continental Op stories.
A number of collections of Hammett stories, both books collecting Continental Op stories and others with miscellaneous Hammett stories, were published as Dell mapbacks. These collections all contained introductory essays by Ellery Queen. A more recent edition contains a short introduction by Columbia professor Steven Marcus.

Complete list of stories

In this list, the two letter designations just before the description indicate that the story was included in particular collections of stories, as listed below. Neither the list of collected books, nor the list of which collected books the stories are in, are complete or comprehensive.
  1. "Arson Plus" . Suspecting insurance fraud, the Op investigates the burning of an isolated farmhouse and its reclusive inhabitant.
  2. "Crooked Souls" . A bullying lumber baron has lost a daughter to kidnappers, but the Op isn't convinced—of anything.
  3. "Slippery Fingers" . The Op and the police search for the owner of the fingerprints strewn over the scene of a gory murder.
  4. "It" . A reckless businessman plotted theft and elopement, then disappeared, until the Op locates him in a pitch-dark basement.
  5. "Bodies Piled Up" . Posing as a killer hunting a killer works too well as the Op gets caught in a crossfire.
  6. "The Tenth Clew" . A rich man is killed with a typewriter and the Op gets dumped into San Francisco Bay.
  7. "Night Shots" . In a lonely country house, the Op investigates pot-shots aimed at a sick old scoundrel.
  8. "Zigzags of Treachery" . When a prominent surgeon commits suicide and an unknown wife shows up, the Op and other agents follow suspect after suspect to untangle a decades-old conspiracy.
  9. "One Hour" . In a busy hour, a hit-and-run leads the Op to a print shop where he's mobbed.
  10. "The House in Turk Street" . Routine questions on a quiet street tumble the Op into a den of thieves.
  11. "The Girl with Silver Eyes" . Following on "Turk Street", a dead poet leads the Op to a dark night's shootout outside a rough-and-tumble roadhouse.
  12. "Women, Politics and Murder" . The Op shuttles between a hysterical wife and a dead-pan mistress, knowing both are liars, to learn who killed a city contractor.
  13. "The Golden Horseshoe" . The Op finds a hophead husband who ran away to Tijuana, but the wife he left behind turns up dead.
  14. "Who Killed Bob Teal?" . A fellow Continental detective was killed while shadowing a suspect, so the Op and a city cop retrace his steps.
  15. "Mike, Alec or Rufus?" . The cops are stumped by a robber who ran into an apartment house and didn't come out, but not the Op.
  16. "The Whosis Kid" . On a hunch, the Op trails a stick-up artist and worms his way into a "double-, triple- and septuple-cross".
  17. "The Scorched Face" . Hunting two missing daughters, the Op uncovers a rash of debutante suicides and disappearances.
  18. "Corkscrew" . The Op is appointed Deputy Sheriff of Corkscrew, Arizona, where cowboys keep getting killed.
  19. "Dead Yellow Women" . The Op braves the dark alleys of Chinatown to learn why a seaside mansion was raided by Asian strangers.
  20. The Gutting of Couffignal . On a wealthy summer island, the Continental Op tries to thwart an invasion when the lights go off and machine guns fire up.
  21. "Creeping Siamese" . A man dies in the Continental office without revealing who knifed him. The Op connects the crime with the victim's decade-old adventures in Asia.
  22. "The Big Knock-Over" . An army of imported gangsters raided two banks, and the Op dodges bullets and fists to find the mastermind.
  23. "$106,000 Blood Money" . In the aftermath of "The Big Knockover", the Op hunts the double-crossing mastermind, as do "half the crooks in the country".
  24. "The Main Death" . The Op ignores a suicide to get back $20,000 - at gun point.
  25. "The Cleansing of Poisonville". Summoned to "Poisonville", the Op finds his client was murdered. The dead man's father rules the town, so the Op strikes a deal to clean up the town "with a free hand". Dodging double-crossing cops and crooks, he exposes the murderer. And refuses to call off the "cleansing".
  26. "Crime Wanted - Male or Female". Stirring up trouble, the Op un-fixes a fight and investigates a year-old "suicide" of the police chief's brother, just as someone dynamites the City Hall holding cells. "Poisonville was beginning to boil out under the lid."
  27. "Dynamite". A raid on a bootlegger's roadhouse makes the cops miss a bank robbery. As the mob ruling "Poisonville" gathers for a "peace conference", the Op tosses "dynamite" that exposes multiple frame-ups and shatters the partnership.
  28. "The 19th Murder". Getting "blood simple as the natives", the Op wakes to find he may have ice-picked his female informer, so runs from the law while steering the mobs into a final battle for control of "Poisonville".
  29. "This King Business" . Seeking a wayward son in the Balkan country of Muravia, the Op learns the boy is funding a kingly coup.
  30. "Black Lives"
  31. "The Hollow Temple"
  32. "Black Honeymoon"
  33. "Black Riddle"
  34. "Fly Paper" . The Op finds a "wandering daughter" who liked rough "yeggs" and ended up dead.
  35. "The Farewell Murder" . The Op struggles to prove a vendetta-bent sadist wasn't nine hours away at the time of a grisly killing.
  36. "Death and Company" . Kidnappers collect ransom money from under the noses of the police, then kill their hostage. Death catches the culprit before the Op can.

    Stories comprising the novels

Red Harvest
  1. "The Cleansing of Poisonville". Summoned to "Poisonville", the Op finds his client was murdered. The dead man's father rules the town, so the Op strikes a deal to clean up the town "with a free hand". Dodging double-crossing cops and crooks, he exposes the murderer. And refuses to call off the "cleansing".
  2. "Crime Wanted—Male or Female". Stirring up trouble, the Op un-fixes a fight and investigates a year-old "suicide" of the police chief's brother, just as someone dynamites the City Hall holding cells. "Poisonville was beginning to boil out under the lid."
  3. "Dynamite". A raid on a bootlegger's roadhouse makes the cops miss a bank robbery. As the mob ruling "Poisonville" gathers for a "peace conference", the Op tosses "dynamite" that exposes multiple frame-ups and shatters the partnership.
  4. "The 19th Murder". Getting "blood simple as the natives", the Op wakes to find he may have ice-picked his female informer, so runs from the law while steering the mobs into a final battle for control of "Poisonville".
The Dain Curse
  1. "Black Lives"
  2. "The Hollow Temple"
  3. "Black Honeymoon"
  4. "Black Riddle"

    Dramatic adaptations

The song "Continental Op" from Rory Gallagher's 1987 album Defender was inspired by the Continental Op, and was dedicated to Hammett.