Blood Money: A Private Operative Murder Story (Dell Mapback No. 53)

188 pp. A novel by the author of The Maltese Falcon. The 'map' on the back cover shows Ann Newhall's Home, the scene of the murders in the story. "Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 - January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), the newspaper comic strip Secret Agent X-9 and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in The New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction". Time magazine included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on a list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 to 2005."