The Continental Op is a master of deceit in the exercise of his occupation. In his 1927 Black Mask story “$106,000 Blood Money” the Op is confronted with a dilemma: should he expose a corrupt fellow detective, thereby hurting the reputation of his agency; and should he also allow an informant to collect the $106,000 reward in a big case even though he is morally certain—but cannot prove—that the informant has murdered one of his agency’s clients? The Op resolves his two problems neatly by manipulating events so that the corrupt detective and the informant get into an armed confrontation in which both are killed. Decades of witnessing human cruelty, misery, and ruin, as well as being instrumental in sending hundreds of people to jail, or to the gallows, have greatly weakened the Op’s natural sympathy with his fellow men. He fears becoming like his boss, “The Old Man”, whom he describes as “a shell, without any human feelings whatsoever”… The Op is one of the first major hardboiled detectives later developed in such characters as Hammett’s own Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer and others.
First Appearance “Arson Plus” in Black Mask (October 1, 1923)
First Publisher Pro-Distributors Publishing Company
Appearance List 36 short stories, 34 published in Black Mask from 1923 to 1930, plus “Who Killed Bob Teal?” in True Detective Mysteries (November 1924) and “This King Business” in Mystery Stories (January 1928). Collections include The Big Knockover and Other Stories (Penguin, 1969) [Internet Archive], The Continental Op, with an introduction by Steven Marcus (Random House, 1974) [Internet Archive]. Also see Scorched Earth: Expressions of Modernity in Dashiell Hammett’s Pulp Fiction by Anna P. Kelly via [Harvard.edu] and “Mapping the Continental Op” at Davy Crockett’s Almanack (Blog, March 30, 2015) [Website].
Sample Read The Big Knockover and Other Stories (Penguin, 1969) [Internet Archive]
Description The Continental Op is a master of deceit in the exercise of his occupation. In his 1927 Black Mask story “$106,000 Blood Money” the Op is confronted with a dilemma: should he expose a corrupt fellow detective, thereby hurting the reputation of his agency; and should he also allow an informant to collect the $106,000 reward in a big case even though he is morally certain—but cannot prove—that the informant has murdered one of his agency’s clients? The Op resolves his two problems neatly by manipulating events so that the corrupt detective and the informant get into an armed confrontation in which both are killed. Decades of witnessing human cruelty, misery, and ruin, as well as being instrumental in sending hundreds of people to jail, or to the gallows, have greatly weakened the Op’s natural sympathy with his fellow men. He fears becoming like his boss, “The Old Man”, whom he describes as “a shell, without any human feelings whatsoever”… The Op is one of the first major hardboiled detectives later developed in such characters as Hammett’s own Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer and others.
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