Description

FIRST EDITION OF THE DAIN CURSE, INSCRIBED BY HAMMETT
IN 1930 TO HOLLYWOOD INSIDER JAMES STARR

HAMMETT, Dashiell. The Dain Curse. Alfred A. Knopf, 1929. Octavo, original mustard cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in custom clamshell box.

First edition of Hammett’s second novel, the final Continental Op novel, inscribed by him to a fellow Hollywood screenwriter, “For James Starr with best regards, Dashiell Hammett, Hollywood, Oct. 3, 1930.”

Featuring the Continental Op, “a nameless operative for the Continental Detective Agency? Hammett’s first important creation and one of the most significant in the literature of crime” (Steinbrunner & Penzler, 105). “Richard Layman has put it best” in noting that the Op, epitomizing the “‘archetypal hard-boiled detective, who embodies that complex blend of responsibility, nobility, cynicism and frustration, was created by Hammett” (Mellen, 106). Dedicated to Albert S. Samuels, who befriended Hammett by hiring him as a copywriter in 1921, the novel was published only one month after Hammett submitted the manuscript of Maltese Falcon to Knopf. Initially published in four parts in Black Mask from November 1928 to February 1929. First edition, first printing, with “dopped in,” p. 260, line 19. Layman A2.1.a. This copy is inscribed to Warner Brothers screenwriter James Starr and dated by Hammett one year after the book’s publication, at a time when he started as a screenwriter for Paramount and was soon to begin his lifelong relationship with Lillian Hellman. With Starr’s bookplate printed “Jimmy Starr Ex Libris Rudolph Valentino” on the front pastedown. Bookseller ticket.

Tiny gutter tear to front free endpaper; expert restoration to original dust jacket. An exceptionally bright near-fine copy, scarce inscribed.