Raymond Chandler claims that the protagonist of the hard-boiled detective story is "the hero. He is everything." This view of the figure of the detective as being of central, almost exclusive importance is equally valid in the case of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories and novels. The Continental Op appears in thirty-six short stories, some of which were then used to make up Red Harvest and The Dain Course (1929). In marked contrast to the master sleuth of the classic detective story, the Op is an employee of a detective agency that sends him on different assignments. He is short, heavy-set, overweight, not physically attractive. The Op is never given a first name, partially because Hammett wanted to depart consciously from the personality cult of the classic detective, and partially to represent the Op as the prototype of the proletarian hero, who labors without much recognition for his wealthy...