In a follow-up to 2012's The Return of the Thin Man, Mysterious Press compiles another batch of largely unpublished Dashiell Hammett fiction in The Hunter and Other Stories. As Julie M. Rivett, Hammett's granddaughter, says in an afterword to the collection, these pieces "offer fresh glimpses into Hammett and his shifting worldview--as a reflective, enigmatic man who toggled between poverty and wealth."
"This volume includes some of Hammett's finest short fiction," Rivett and her co-editor, Richard Layman, assure us, and for work the author left in his drawer, they are surprisingly good. "The Kiss-Off" is particularly noteworthy. This screen treatment became the basis for City Streets (1931), starring Gary Cooper and Sylvia Sidney, of whom Hammett said, "She's good, that ugly little baby, and currently my favorite screen actress."
The first four stories reveal Hammett's experiments in the treatment of crime, including the title story, "The Hunter," in the mold of the Continental Op stories. The next group deals with his longstanding interest in the ways men struggle to find a purpose in their lives, while the stories in the third section explore what he called the "relation between the sexes," revealing strong sympathies toward the female characters.
Hammett always said his fiction dealt with people: "It's up to readers to try to figure out what in the name of God they're about, if anything." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher