TOWARD THE BEGINNING of “The Gutting of Couffignal,” which opens Random House’s new Dashiell Hammett collection, The Big Knockover, Hammett’s unnamed San Francisco detective wiles away sentry duty by reading (an occupation equal, to his and his creator’s credit, to crimebusting and storytelling). “The book was called The Lord of the Sea, and had to do with a strong, tough and violent fellow named Hogarth . . . There were plots and counterplots, kidnapings, murders . . . It sounds dizzy here, but in the book it was as real as a dime.”
The Big Knockover, a Dashiell Hammett Anthology. Random House, $5.95
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