Tue 28 Jun 2011
Reviewed by Curt Evans: DASHIELL HAMMETT – The Dain Curse.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[28] Comments
Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse
A Review by Curt J. Evans
DASHIELL HAMMETT – The Dain Curse. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1929. Reprinted many times since. TV movie: 1978 (with James Coburn as “Hamilton Nash”).
Not all Hammetts were created equal. Case in point: Hammett’s second novel, his famous family slaughter saga, The Dain Curse. Less viscerally organic than his first crime tale, Red Harvest (1929), it is also, in my opinion, vastly inferior both to his immediately following works, The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931), and even to his last novel, the slick (if rather facile) The Thin Man (1934).
I am hardly the first person to note flaws in The Dain Curse. A quarter-century ago, in his entry on the novel in 1001 Midnights, Bill Pronzini observed that The Dain Curse was “overlong and decidedly melodramatic.†Indeed it is!
Where in Red Harvest the gang violence culminating in massacre that Hammett chronicles seems to rise naturally out of the darkest strains of indigenous Americana, in The Dain Curse the bloodletting is tied to an impossible plot that resembles the more absurd Golden Age British detective fiction that Hammett purportedly despised.
If you were to ask me which 1929 detective novel is the more ridiculous when looked at objectively, The Dain Curse or S. S. Van Dine’s The Bishop Murder Case (though Van Dine was not British, he clearly was heavily influenced by the sort of classical detective story we associate most with British writers), I would be hard pressed to name the latter title, even though it involves an unbelievably baroque plot involving multiple slayings carried out on the basis of nursery rhymes.
At one late point in the The Dain Curse, Hammett’s detective, the Continental Op, stops to list for a friend the myriad acts of bloody mayhem that have occurred around him of late. I have to say I found this list hilarious:
“Yeah. Gabrielle’s father, step-mother, physician, and husband have been slaughtered in less than a handful of weeks — all the people closest to her. That’s enough to tie it all together for me. If you want more links, I can point them out to you. Upton and Ruppert were the apparent instigators of the first trouble, and got killed. Haldorn of the second, and got killed. Whidden of the third, and got killed. Mrs. Leggett killed her husband; Cotton apparently killed his wife; and Haldorn would have killed his if I hadn’t blocked him. Gabrielle, as a child, was made to kill her mother; Gabrielle’s maid was made to kill Riese, and nearly me. Leggett left behind him a statement explaining — not altogether satisfactorily — everything, and was killed. So did and was Mrs. Cotton. Call any of these pairs coincidences. Call any couple of pairs coincidences. You’ll still have enough left to point at somebody who’s got a system he likes, and sticks to it.â€
This passage makes Philo Vance’s “psychological†lectures at the end of The Greene Murder Case (1928) and The Bishop Murder Case seems overwhelmingly convincing by comparison. Unfortunately, it is reflective of the many pages in the novel given over to the Op’s inevitably tedious explanations of an extremely convoluted but ultimately not very rewarding mystery plot.
To be fair to Hammett, with The Dain Curse (as with Red Harvest) he was faced with the task of stitching together a novel from short stories. To make The Dain Curse stick together in one piece he was forced to use as glue the criminal mastermind gambit.
This device usually is not convincing in Edgar Wallace novels either, but then Edgar Wallace is not universally acclaimed today for having heroically and almost single-handedly (with some help from Raymond Chandler) introduced realism to the Golden Age mystery story.
This is not to say that there are not interesting points to The Dain Curse. There are times when one pleasingly can hear the wisecracking voice of Philip Marlowe and that smart ass legion of private eyes who jauntily followed Hammett’s Continental Op and Sam Spade down those mean streets:
“For God’s sake let’s get her out of here — out of this house — now, while there’s time!â€
I said she’d look swell running through the streets barefooted and with nothing on but a bloodstained nightie.
And then there is simply the thrill in The Dain Curse of Hammett’s sharp and direct depictions of drug dependency and pure, elemental brute violence (which in 1929 must have been really thrilling — or appalling, depending on the reader):
“God damn you,†I said and hit him in the face with the gun.
Although I think that, in contravention of academics who have given much serious study to it, Hammett’s treatment in The Dain Curse of a religious cult is more pulp fiction than deep thinkin’, nevertheless I was greatly amused by this sardonic observation from the Op:
They brought their cult to California because everybody does, and picked San Francisco because it held less competition than Los Angeles.
Too bad Hammett (and the Op) missed the Swinging Sixties!
Overall, however, I would say that The Dain Curse is neither a great crime novel nor even a very good one, really — though it undeniably has importance both in the study of Hammett’s development as a writer and in the development of American detective fiction.
But when it comes to melodramatically and improbably cursed genteel families and wildly overcomplicated murder plots, give me S. S. Van Dine any day of the week. Indubitably, his Philo Vance is the go-to guy when one is faced with that sort of the case.
June 29th, 2011 at 9:10 am
Thought James Coburn’s performance as Hamilton Nash was more on target than anything else connected to the project. Obviously a stand-in for Hammett, it worked well. Nothing else, other than a moment or two from Malachy McCourt, comes out right.
June 29th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Curt, the true merit of Hammett’s early work is his short stories not the first two novels. DAIN CURSE fails especially when compared to the four separate short stories that were stuck together.
All four appeared in BLACK MASK. BLACK LIVES (11/28), HOLLOW TEMPLE (12/28), BLACK HONEYMOON (1/29) and BLACK RIDDLE (2/29). Source: Mike Humbert’s great website Hammett page.
http://www.mikehumbert.com/Dashiell_Hammett_19_News_Page.html
Barry, Coburn was wonderful in this and in nearly everything he did. My favorites of his were LAST OF THE MOBILE HOT-SHOTS and BALTIMORE BULLET (an unlikely pair to be in the same sentence). But while he made a great Hamilton Nash, he was miscast as the Op.
I was working as a TV critic at the time and was disappointed in the TV mini-series (CBS, May 22,23,24, 1978). Yet it won director E.W. Swackhamer an Emmy and the writer Robert Lenski’s script won the Edgar. So go figure.
June 29th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
“But while he made a great Hamilton Nash, he was miscast as the Op.”
Michael, you beat me to wondering about this. No way does Coburn match my minds-eye picture of the Op, but he sure does look like a “Hamilton Nash.” I missed this mini-series when it was first on, and since posting this review of Curt’s, I’ve been searching around to see if I can find it on DVD in its original uncut form. (I also wonder if I found and bought a copy the last time CURSE was reviewed on this blog. I have several boxes of DVDs not yet catalogued, and it may be among them. But that’s my problem and not anyone else’s.)
June 29th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Steve, be careful with the DVD. There are two versions, a single disc of the reedited miniseries as a TV movie and a two disc set with, reportedly, the unedited mini-series.
June 29th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Michael
Yes, it’s that word “reportedly” that concerns me and I’m looking into. I believe an unedited version of the mini-series appeared in the old video cassette format, and the two-disc set you refer to may also be uncut, with the emphasis now on the word “may”.
June 29th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Coburn really does look like Hammett in that photo. Michael, I would love to read the original stories. I’ve read most of Hammett’s short stories and have a high opinion of them.
June 29th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
By pure coincidence, in Mike Nevins’ next column he will have something to say about the Hammett short stories. Look for it later today or early this evening, I hope.
June 29th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
They seem to keep discovering lost ones, don’t they?
June 30th, 2011 at 9:22 am
Funny that those swinging sixties (and seventies) were full of PI California Cult mysteries that read much like The Dain Curse
June 30th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Some books are way ahead of their time!
June 30th, 2011 at 10:45 am
Apparently all writers have good books and bad books in them, even Hammett. I’ve just completed a chronological re-reading of all of Hammett (a several year project) and was stunned at how great some of it was, all the way from 1922 up to “His Brother’s Keeper,” and how absolutely dreadful some of it was. THE DAIN CURSE is certainly his worst novel but if you really want to see a great writer at his nadir I would refer you to AGENT X-9. Alex Raymond’s artwork is breathtaking while Hammett’s continuity is so lazy and disengaged as to be offensive.
June 30th, 2011 at 11:10 am
William Conrad is who I pictured as the perfect actor for the Continental Op.
June 30th, 2011 at 11:17 am
He’s perfect, all right. Short, a little stout, and in his younger days, about one finger snap from a powder keg ready to go off.
June 30th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Steve,
I’ve got both the old VHS version and the two disc DVD version. The old VHS version was heavily edited and runs only 2 hours in length. Almost everything from the first episode of the series has been cut out. The two disc DVD is the real magilla however and has all three episodes in their entirety.
June 30th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
R. Dittmar
Thanks for the info. It’s just what I was looking for. I was mistaken about the old VHS tape, then, not that I was likely to start hunting for it. And that’s good news about the 2-disc DVD set. I haven’t been able to come up with anything that says I bought it earlier, though it’s still in the back of my mind that I did. Obviously I meant to. But if I can’t find it, than it’s the same as not having it, isn’t it?
— Steve
June 30th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Stephen, that’s very interesting, had never heard of that work.
Well, I know Dain Curse has its partisans, but, while it does have some moments of Dashiell-like flash, I couldn’t help thinking while reading it that it likely would never be in print had it not had Hammett’s name attached to it. I’d personally rather read S. S Van Dine, like I said, or Edgar Wallace. There’s not a single Edgar Wallace in print as far as I know (unless its some lapsed copyright outfit) and a lot of his stuff is more entertaining and more believable than The Dain Curse.
People who raise Hammett to a high level (and I am one) have to deal with the fact that he could be quite dismissive and cynical of his own work, I think, even though there is that one famous letter where he talks about raising the level of detective fiction as literature and his book reviews certainly he indicate that he had ideas in that direction.
June 30th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Oh, I have to concur about William Conrad. Do you know that’s who I was seeing when I read about his deeds, even without realizing it!
June 30th, 2011 at 5:08 pm
I’d love for someone to review the uncut version of the film!
June 30th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Curt,
It’s not my place to do a full review, but I will say it’s quite definitely worth seeking out the unedited version on DVD. (And by all means avoid the old VHS release. I’ve been looking to horsewhip the villains that butchered that for going on 30 years now.) It’s very faithful to the book.
What surprised me a little though after rewatching it after many many years is how leisurely it seems in parts. Hammett’s writing was always pretty taut, but this adaptation has a lot of padding. James Colburn is always sitting around shooting the breeze with his friends and bosses about old times and old cases and it all seems pretty un-Hammett like. If you look past the “we-need-to-mark-time-’til-commercial” slow spots, though, it’s really pretty well done.
June 30th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Curt,
I hope you don’t mind me wasting your bandwidth in respectful disagreement. While I can’t go so far as to say it’s my favorite Hammett next to say The Maltese Falcon, I love The Dain Curse.
I agree with you that it’s quite melodramatic, but I’d argue that it has to be. I think Hammett was deliberately twisting the S.S. Van Dine/Ellery Queen cozy-style mystery to his own ends. While formally held together by the mystery plotting, the book is really an extended tragedy. Every character but the Op tries to exploit Gabriella for his/her own selfish ends and is ultimately destroyed for trying.
You can see what Hammett was trying to do in the character of Tom (What’s His Name), Gabriella’s eventual husband. In an old cozy mystery, Tom would be the stock character second banana hero who helps the detective solve the case and gets the girl because the detective’s a sexless thinking machine. Here it’s quite clear from the start that there’s something off about him and he’s chasing Gabriella because of some deluded fantasy. He ends up paying the price for what is ultimately selfishness on his part. As the only character not trying to take advantage of Gabriella, the Op is the only one who ends up helping her in any way.
I’m also very impressed at the big reveal at the end when the Op confronts the “mastermind”. The killer has already been pretty severely punished physically at this point, but clings to a believe in his own brilliance to get him by. The Op on the other hand brutally spells out how he’s nothing but a nutty little creep and that’s how he’ll always be thought of. Far from being a master criminal, he was really just an on-looker to the other characters self-destruction. The only thing his machinations ultimately did was bring about his own horrific maiming.
Oddly enough, the book I’d compare it to is Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. Here Hammett twisted the mystery story of his day to the ends of a character study. Later Chandler performed the second generation trick of twisting Hammett’s mystery story framework to the ends of a character study.
June 30th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
#11. Don’t blame Hammett for all of SECRET AGENT X-9 flaws. King Features was not happy with Hammett’s character and writing and had others rewrite much of his work. Reportedly, Hammett wanted to do a detective and King wanted a spy.
There are at least two different print reprints of Hammett’s comic strip work.
Kitchen Sink Press (1990) with an introduction by respected comic historian Bill Blackbeard. It covered the strip from the beginning (January 1934) until November 16, 1935.
International Polygonics LTD Library of Crime Classics (1983) with introduction by William F. Nolan (noted Hammett biographer). This book also started with the first strip but continued the strips until April 20, 1935.
The Library of Crime Classics also added a story written by Leslie Charteris (THE SAINT).
June 30th, 2011 at 8:29 pm
R. Dittmar, thanks for the comment, which I found very interesting. That’s a good point about Tom as the romantic hero. You’re certainly right that in the traditional mystery his treatment would have been quite different.
June 30th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Dooohhhh! though. I just looked up The Dain Curse and Gabrielle’s husband was named Eric Collinson. I’m getting too old to remember the first OR last names!
June 30th, 2011 at 10:12 pm
And you’re right! Who was Tom anyway?
July 1st, 2011 at 12:37 pm
#21. I was referring only to Hammett’s input in the series based on the first three adventures. It’s easy to see why Dash was let go, and makes a sad swan song best ignored except for Raymond’s dazzling art.
April 2nd, 2021 at 4:44 pm
[…] in the view of the author himself, and by a fairly wide margin among most critics who celebrate his literary achievement overall. Yet the book, which Hammett churned out quickly […]
August 14th, 2021 at 12:33 am
Tom is Tom Fisk, I believe, the one who hands the bomb to the fellow who sets if off, not knowing it’s a bomb. Tom does 5 to 15; his wife disappears (conveniently), never to be heard from again.
I just read this book. It certainly feels stitched together. My main surprise, a good one, was the Op’s encounter with the ghost, or spirit. I thought that a scene very hard to write convincingly, and Hammett pulled it off.
I have a hard time visualizing Hammett’s physical descriptions of his characters. Everyone gets a physical description (gotta have those words),but rarely can I get a mental image of the person. Only Bridget O’Shaughnessey gets a description that feels vital to the story, and in that book, Hammett returns to the description again and again.
August 4th, 2023 at 12:16 pm
I have just finished “The Dain Curse” and the story feels a bit out of place by Dashiell Hammett’s usual standards. The religious cult angle didn’t work too well, for me. I think it struck a false note. Plus, the narrative was rather episodic.
Being British, I can honestly say our fictional detective writers are capable indeed of writing something far more than “classical.”