Joe Hudock

Biographer Nathan Ward has called "The Tenth Clew" Dashiell Hammett's "first real jewel of a story." In it, Hammett's nameless Continental Detective Agency operative survives being knocked unconscious and dumped in San Francisco Bay. This kind of action was what his Black Mask magazine editors and readers were asking for, and Hammett somewhat grudgingly obliged them with continuing stories of the Continental Op.