I realized something after reading more Op stories in this
Hammett anthology and then hitting "The Assistant Murderer."
It opens with a description of the PI, ugly, red-faced Alec
Rush, who's sitting in his office. A client comes in. He lays
out his problem and Rush takes the job. Nothing new
there--for us.
Continental Op stories usually start with the Op going to see
the person that hired the agency and interviewing them about
the case. He doesn't sit around in an office waiting for work
wondering where the money will come from. In fact he and the
other operatives seem busy all the time. He never mentions
details about how much the agency charges.
The Op works very closely with the police, and he's pretty
much a private cop. (The Pinkertons could be a private army
sometimes.) An entire half of the cliched hardboiled dick
doesn't apply to him. Maybe he's just a short, fat,
middle-aged middle-class guy who has a job he likes, but it's
not his life.
What post-Continental Op characters worked for a large
agency? I can't think of any. Spade had a partner (for a
while), Marlowe worked alone. They're the two classic
characters. In the '20s, was BLACK MASK running other stories
about agencies? Did that background just die out, or was the
Op rare even then?
I seem to remember that Jonathan Latimer's Bill Crane worked
for a small agency, but three or ten people is nothing to the
Continental's reach. They had branches everywhere and always
extra operatives available to help.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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