Honest Gain: Dicey Cases of the Continental Op

Summary

“Now I’m a detective because I happen to like the work. It pays me a fair salary, but I could find other jobs that would pay more…Now I pass up that twenty-five or thirty thousand of honest gain because I like being a detective, like the work. And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can. Otherwise there’d be no sense to it. That’s the fix I am in. I don’t know anything else, don’t enjoy anything else, don’t want to know or enjoy anything else. You can’t weigh that against any sum of money.”
— “The Gutting of Couffignal” by Dashiell Hammett

Hot on the heels of Best Cases of the Continental Op comes Honest Gain: Dicey Cases of the Continental Op, another original compilation from Skyboat Media. The Continental Op is back on the case, tracking down thieves and murderers from the steep streets of San Francisco to the rough and tumble Wild West in Arizona. These six stories featuring the Continental Op show that this private eye is not afraid to get his hands dirty in order to get the job done right, or get himself hurt in the process. With his utter lack of vanity, his shrewd sense of perception, and his gritty frankness, the Continental Op is able to see what the cops can’t—without bragging about it.

This compilation also features two humorous sketches that Hammett wrote for Smart Set in 1923. “The Master Mind” and “From the Memoirs of a Private Detective” offer a bit of levity in the world of noir detectives, and in them both you can see the seeds of Hammett’s later detective fiction.

Honest Gain presents a detective with his own code and an unquenchable thirst for finding out the truth. 

Full Contents:

1. Introduction by Alison Belle Bews

2. “The Whosis Kid”

3. “Night Shots”

4. “The Scorched Face”

5. “The Gutting of Couffignal”

6. “Mike, Alec, or Rufus?” 

7. “Corkscrew”

8. “The Master Mind”

9. “From the Memoirs of a Private Detective”