Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, 1921-1960
The promise of this collection is a glimpse of the "real" Hammett, through letters selected by his daughter, Josephine Hammett Marshall. But the volume is also a gentle wrestling match between Marshall's version of her reclusive, often absent father, and the Hammett of his famous lover, Lillian Hellman. "Lillian was a constant in his life but not the everything she would have liked to be," Marshall writes in the forward, citing the "myth of the Great Romance" between Hammett and Hellman. The letters themselves offer a fascinating look at Hammett the man, but they can also be read as the effort of a loving daughter to recapture her long-lost father from his mistress.
-- Anthony York
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