Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland, USA. He spent his early years in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He left school at the age of fourteen and proceeded to work on a variety of jobs. When he was twenty, he started to work for Pinkerton's, first as a clerk and then as an operative. In total he spent eight years with Pinkerton's. After the First World War, he settled in San Francisco working for the local branch of Pinkerton's. At this time he started to write. His first story was published in 1922 in a magazine. In the Thirties he moved to New York. By this time he was famous. Hammett gave up writing in 1934. In the Fifties he became a victim of the McCarthy 'witch hunts'. He was jailed for six months because he refused to name contributors to a Communist bail fund. When he got out of prison he was a sick man. On top of this, he was black-listed by Hollywood. The last four years of his life he spent as a recluse.
He wrote hundreds of stories but only five full-length novels.