Arson Plus

Called in to investigate a suspicious house fire, Dashiell Hammett's nameless Continental Op finds a straightforward insurance job hardening into cold-blooded murder – lean, tough, and unmistakably the birth of hardboiled mystery.

First published in Black Mask in 1923 under the pen name Peter Collinson, Arson Plus introduced the Continental Op, the stout, ageless San Francisco operative who would become one of the defining figures of American detective writing. Drawing on his own years as a Pinkerton agent, Hammett stripped the story of its drawing-room gentility and gave it grit, cynicism, and a hard moral edge, laying the foundations for Sam Spade and everything that followed.