Hard-Boiled Essentials

To understand where hard-boiled crime fiction came from, you need to start with Dashiell Hammett. If you don't know Hammett, you won"t understand the guys who followed his trail.

Hammett was an actual hardguy who was, before he started selling books, a real-life Pinkerton operative. His experiences as a Pinkerton man are the basis of his flat-out best work, which are the Continental Op stories. There are shorts and novelettes, and all of them are worth reading.  What you must read are these...