AN ALL-ROUND GOOD EGG
ashiell Hammett, a Pinkerton National Detective Agency gumshoe turned author, was described in his obituary as “the dean of the… ‘hardboiled’ school of detective fiction”. Dorothy Parker once described Sam Spade, the anti-hero in Hammett’s most famous book, , as being “so hard-boiled you could roll him on the White House lawn”. Writing about the eponymous character in , a critic wrote: “It is a long step from Holmes pondering
