Dashiell Hammett, who lived from 1894-1961, is largely known as the inventor the “hard-boiled” detective fiction genre. 

I like to include his short stories in our survey of mystery fiction because we see the effects of his style on many hybrid varieties of the hard-boiled detective today.

“They Only Can Hang You Once,” published in 1932, was only one of four short stories Hammett wrote featuring the iconic Sam Spade.  He wrote several dozen short stories featuring the nameless “Continental Ops” private detective who works for the Continental Detective Agency.

Read on to learn more about the writer and the hard-boiled detective genre.

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Hammett is credited with developing the Hardboiled detective prototype. You know the guy. He wears a trench coat and pulls his hat over his forehead, obscuring his face. He keeps a bottle of booze in his desk (in his office in the seedier part of town). He carries a gun (which he sometimes uses). He chain smokes.

According to tvtropes.org, the Hardboiled Detective is an offshoot of the Great Detective tradition.

The Hardboiled Detective may not have the mind of Holmes or Poirot, but he (usually male but not always) sticks to a case until he figures it out. He uses street smarts, observation, and sometimes a punch in the chops.

The Hardboiled Detective became a popular sub-genre of mystery in the early 20th century. This may have something to do with a perception that the criminal justice system at the time was not trustworthy—to solve a mystery, you needed all the help you could get!

In contrast to the tough, serious Sam Spade, Hammett created the light-hearted detective couple, Nick and Nora Charles (and let’s not forget their detective canine, Asta). Nick and Nora were featured in several novels, six movies, the Lux Radio Theatre, and a television series.

Just as Sam Spade created a role model for future generations of hard-boiled detectives (think of Spencer from Robert Parker’s series, Kojack, Columbo, etc.), Nick and Nora also provided a pleasing formula for a detecting duo (think of Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd in “Moonlighting”).

As an interesting aside, Hammett based the character of Nora on writer Lillian Hellman, with whom he had an affair lasting more than 30 years.

According to one biography, many of Hammett’s characters were based on people he knew through his detective work with Pinkerton. He wrote more than 80 short stories and five novels (Dashiell Hammett Biography, 2021).

In his forties Hammett became more involved with left-wing politics. His work with the Civil Rights Congress made him the target of the anti-Communist movement led by Joseph McCarthy. He served five months in prison for contempt of court when he refused to “name names.”

Hammett never completely recovered from TB. He also developed emphysema, and his health continued to decline. As mentioned, he was also a heavy drinker. One writer explained, “Serious writing, the kind Hammett did for those 12 years, is terrifically demanding. The energy and concentration involved is beyond what most of us are capable of” (Kleinzahler, 2012). This is not to justify his alcoholism, but it sheds some light on the pressure he was under.

Hammett disappeared from the public eye toward the end of his life, but today he is honored as one of the more influential writers of the 20th century (Dashiell Hammett Biography, 2021).

Finally, “They Can Only Hang You Once” opens with a bang. Spade, using a false name, is waiting to see an ill, elderly man in what seems to be a large house, when a woman’s scream is followed by a gunshot. He rushes in to find a dead woman and two bystanders.

The reader’s interest is fully engaged in this, the fourth and last Samuel Spade story. Once again, Sergeant Tom Polhaus and Lieutenant Dundy enter the case and we’re off on a wild ride, Spade solving the case with the police contributing essentially nothing.

Only half as long as “Too Many Have Lived,” this is the most enjoyable of the short stories and the most action-oriented. It has the elements that would have produced a good novella.

But even though “Too Many Have Lived” and “They Can Only Hang You Once” are interesting stories, Spade is not all that interesting as a character. Hammett wrote the short stories to make money (which he spent as fast as he earned) and they come across as such. Nearly any tough private eye of the day could have been used instead of Spade and there would be little difference.

Of Spade, Hammett stated: “Spade had no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and what quite a few of them, in their cockier moments, thought they approached. For your private detective does not…want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent bystander, or client.”

The second review is by Mike Grost.

"They Can Only Hang You Once" (1932) seems to be Hammett's attempt to write an intuitionist, Golden Age style detective story. It involves an upper middle class family of suspects, including a lawyer and a stockbroker; there is more than one crime; it takes place in a large house whose architecture plays a role in the plot; there is a butler; and a long lost relative from Australia, reminiscent of that most Golden of Golden Age novels, A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery (1922).

Hammett's surprising solution involves the Least Likely Suspect. Sam Spade solves the mystery, not through any "realistic" detective work, but through insight into the crime, just as in the intuitionist school. Hammett does include some of his personal trademark, the collapse of a social institution; here it is financial relationships among a family that get melted down. Despite the way the story involves a different set of conventions, there is nothing of a light hearted jeu d'espirit about the tale. It seems instead to be a serious attempt to write a real detective story in a different tradition.

Many of Hammett's characters lie repeatedly. We are used to this with Brigid in The Maltese Falcon, a character whose constant lying has been burlesqued in many movie spoofs. These often funny parodies accustom us to see this lying as a personal flaw of some of Hammett's characters. However, the lying also serves a structural purpose in the construction of Hammett's plots, for example, the lies of the wife in "Women, Politics and Murder". First we see one version of the truth, then the detective goes off and learns a fact from someone else than the liar. This enables him to ingeniously deduce that the liar's story is concealing something.

This logical deduction is in the full tradition of detective story puzzle plotting. Then he goes back to the character, confronts them, and gets a fuller version of the real story. Then he goes off and gets another fact, which enables him to uncover further lies in the liar's tale, and the whole cycle continues. The liar can strip off several versions of illusion from the tale. The whole thing enables a "zigzag" effect: first one story, then another clue, then back to a second story, then back to a second clue, and so on, with the plot going back and forth between the unraveling story and the clues.

We will need to “shake the pinwheels out of our noodles” to piece together the puzzle of “They Can Only Hang You Once.”

It’s not a spoiler to call this a case of the miserly uncle and his greedy nephews (we can see that coming from the start).

However, it’s fascinating to see how Hammett handles this familiar trope.

The setting:

• Doesn’t play as important role as in some of Hammett’s San Francisco-based tales (where you get a true sense of the city). 

• What’s image do you get of the setting (Wallace Binnet’s large house)?  And how does Hammett convey the details without extensive description of the interior?

Point of view:

Unlike the first person voice we’ve read featuring Hammett’s nameless Continental Ops guy, this is narrated through Sam Spade’s eyes.

Police officers (they have worked with Spade before):

“Detective Sergeant Polhaus—a big, carelessly shaven, florid man in dark clothes that needed pressing”

“Lieutenant Dundy—smaller, compactly built, square-faced—stood with legs apart, head thrust a little forward, in the center of the room”

The Plot:

This action-packed drama is what Hammett was known for.  Readers step into the scene and experience a rush of adrenaline, the thrill of not quite knowing “whonnunit” and the anticipation of guessing what might come next.

This opening line suggests that disguised identity and deception will figure into the story:

Samuel Spade said: "My name is Ronald Ames. I want to see Mr. Binnett—Mr. Timothy Binnett."

As we learn, Timothy Binnett apparently made a fortune “Down Under” in Australia, and now, old and ill, wants to spend time with his only remaining relatives, his nephews Ira and Wallace Binnett.

The brothers assume they are both heirs to the old man’s money…which leads to suspicion and a falling out between them. When Uncle Tim leaves for Wallace’s house, Ira loses contact (and hires Spade).

Spade’s little ruse as “Mr. Ronald Ames” fails as soon as he enters the Wallace Binnett household and the final stage of the family drama plays out.

The action is a bit confusing.

Plot questions to answer:

• Concerning the first murder scene: what actually happened?

• Who is the first victim?

• Who attacked Uncle Tim?

• Why was Ira lurking around the back of the house?

• Why was Jarboe spying through Uncle Tim’s keyhole?  And what were the consequences?

• What is the relationship between the two sisters, Wallace, and Timothy Binnett?

In the final scene:

• See if you can summarize what really happened, as detected by Spade.

• In particular, what did Spade find hidden in the brick (and how did he know it was there?)?

• Who has the last “laugh” in this story?

If you like Hammett and the Sam Spade character you’ll want to read more, and I recommend The Maltese Falcon.  It makes a fun book-to-movie adaptation as well. Now do you see evidence of Hammett’s style in other mystery writers (of his time as well as now)?

Dashiell Hammett. (2021). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dashiell-Hammett

Dashiell Hammett Biography. (2021). Retrieved from https://www.famousauthors.org/dashiell-hammett

Byrne, B. (2014). Retrieved from https://blackgate.com/2014/05/05/the-public-life-of-sherlock-holmes-a-man-called-spade/

Kleinzahler, A. (2005). The Inebriate Life/ Alchohol didn’t slow Hammett Down. Retrieved from  https://www.sfgate.com/magazine/article/The-Inebriate-Life-Alcohol-didn-t-slow-2701044.php