The Internet Book Database of Fiction

#	Date	Publisher	Binding	Cover
1	1983-00-00	Random House

Blurb:: This is the definitive biography of one of America"s most important, most fascinating and most enigmatic twentieth-century writers. It is the first and only book on Hammett written with the full cooperation of his longtime friend Lillian Hellman, Hammett"s late wife Josephine and his daughters. It is based on a great deal of material that has never been available before, including many Hammett letters and Ms. Hellman"s recollections. Hammett began writing late and was finished at 40; for more than a quarter of a century he tried to write another book. It"s to Diane Johnson"s credit that she devotes two-thirds of her excellent life of Hammett to those burnt-out years. Johnson has done her research well. A novelist, she writes her biography as a fiction writer would -- which is to say with appropriate twists and a breezy style. Sometimes she jumps to the present tense; sometimes she writes as if from her subject"s point of view; sometimes she pauses for a brief digression on human nature. A surprising and deeply moving portrait of Hammett emerges from this biography.