Dashiell Hammett

Miss Gabriel Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die - violently. Is she the victim of a family curse? The short, squat, utterly unsentimental Continental Op, the best private detective around, has his doubts and finds himself confronting something infinitely more dangerous. This is the Continental Op's most bizarre case.

The Dain Curse

Colleen

3 Stars
 
*A series of loosely connected mysteries that are interesting but haven’t aged well*


The Dain Curse is the second in series about insurance investigators from the golden age of mystery. The book is narrated in first person by an unnamed member of the Continental Op investigators. As a former detective writing about his own time, Hammett’s work has an authenticity that can’t be captured by modern copycats. Unfortunately, this one just wasn't one of Hammett's best. It didn't have as much snappy dialogue or femme fatales.

The story was actually split into three loosely connected short stories. It started with the main character investigating a home robbery where some diamonds were stories. This led to him becoming entangled in a series of cases revolving around a supposedly cursed family.


  “‘You’re her daughter,’ she cried, ‘and you’re cursed with the same black soul and rotten blood that she and I and all the Dains have had; and you’re cursed with your mother’s blood on your hands in babyhood; and with your twisted mind and the need for drugs that are my gifts to you; and your life will be black as your mother’s and mine were black.’”

While I didn't guess what would happen with the plot, I wasn't too invested in it. There were some farfetched elements in the stories. The spurts of action livened things up. And the characters, although all amoral at best, were still interesting. I did appreciate the conversations between the detective and the novel writer. It felt like a tongue-in-cheek conversation between the two different elements of Hammett’s own life.

The major problem with The Dain Curse is that it is not a story that aged well. There was a ton of casual racism, racial stereotypes, and all of the minorities being described as inferior to the white characters. I mentioned previously that there weren't any femme fatales, but beyond that, all of the female characters were completely vapid damsels in distress prone to frequent hysterics. Drug use was also a major part of the story. “Cocaine addict damsel in distress needing to constantly be rescued” is just not a troupe I like. So overall, this was a disappointing installment in the series.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 2 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 2 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars

'Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best' THE TIMES Miss Gabriel Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die - violently. Is she the victim of a family curse? The short, squat, utterly unsentimental Continental Op, the best private detective around, has his doubts and finds himself confronting something infinitely more dangerous. This is the Continental Op's most bizarre case and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.

Emmett

"You've got a flighty mind. That's no good in this business. You don't catch murderers by amusing yourself with interesting thoughts. You've got to sit down to all the facts you can get and turn them over and over until they click."

Sometimes too-eager and over-dramatic state of events are counterpointed by the nameless continental op's levelheadedness and good nature. There's a coy chapter (18) in which a detective and a novelist discuss the appropriateness of a person's disposition to the calling of sleuth, and that comes closest to a nudge-and-wink without Hammett tacitly acknowledging it as meta-commentary.

Jason Porterfield

This one's a solid Continental Op story, losing points only by virtue of not being Red Harvest. The episodic structure is interesting, a bit like meeting with Rickey Henderson at regular intervals throughout the baseball season to find out how his life of larceny is progressing.

The Dain Curse

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