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40 year old hero
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this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Read Dashiell Hammett's books.
The Thin Man's hero is pushing forty, and the Continental Op is 'neither young enough or old enough to think any woman finds [him] fascinating.'
Well well well, what a cosmic coincidence. I picked up “The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Selected Stories” by Dashiell Hammett from my local library. I only picked it up on a whim that short stories are suitable for story time before bed; I didn’t know anything of Hammett before.
So far I’ve only enjoyed The House in Turk Street. I’m impressed how he can make 30 pages pretty engaging. The characters aren’t too deep, even going so far as being stereotype characatures, but it allows for a more fast paced plot from being bogged down with backstory and motivation.
What I’m saying is, it’s creepily weird (in a good way) to hear his name drop on Lemmy and that his short & sweet, if also shallow, stories are so far helping me get back into reading after a college curriculum of textbooks and impenetrable classics (I love your ideas Kant, but God what a snooze).
Remember that you may think he is using stereotype characters, but he actually invented most of the tropes which everyone then copied later.
True story.
"The rag lay" meant stealing washing off a clothes line. It was the kind of crime a tramp would pull. In one of his stories he had the hero insult a woman by saying her mother had worked the rag lay. His editor objected to the line, because he thought it sounded obscene.
Hammett cut the line, but in his next story he used the term 'gunsel.' Since it sounded like 'gun' the editor approved it without a thought.
'Gunsel' was slang for a straight guy who traded sexual favors in prison.
Hammett should be known to every American school child.
When WW2 broke out he was one of the most famous authors in the country. As big as Stephen King is today. He was too old to fight, and would have been rejected for the Army because he'd been gassed in WW1.
He got into the Army, even though he had to have all his teeth pulled out.
Later he would be sent to prison for not naming names during the McCarthy Era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell_Hammett