Lost Stories, by Dashiell Hammett (HC, 2005, $3.25)
Most of us have heard of The Maltese Falcon. Many of us love watching Thin Man movies. (Trivia question- Why was Nick Charles called the Thin Man?)
Here are 21 "long lost Hammett stories, all either never published in an anthology or unavailable for decades. Stories range from the first fiction Hammett ever wrote to his last. All stories have been restored to their initial texts, replacing often-wholesale cuts with the original versions for the first time... For each story, Hammett researcher Vince Emery tells how Hammett's life shaped his story and how the story affected his life and other works, revealing insights not disclosed in any other book."
In particular I loved The Thin Man and the Flac, told with pictures for the magazine Click. I loved the story even though though Hammett probably never actually wrote it.
Look for this book in the short stories section, avail. 4/24.
(Answer to the trivia question-
"In his 1933 novel, The Thin Man, the thin man of the title was a corpse that never appeared. Somehow- perhaps it was because William Powell became the movie Nick Charles- people forgot about the corpse and started to think of the Thin Man as the nickname for the detective. Finally, Hammett gave up. Even he believes it now.")
