Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley ... . He wrote at first (and almost to the end) for people with a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there. Violence did not dismay them; it was right down their street.
The chief difference between the exceptionally knotty problem facing the detective of fiction and that facing the real detective is that in the former there is usually a paucity of clues, and in the latter altogether too many.
— Dashiell Hammett
Chandler wrote the man he wanted to be — gallant and suffused with a lively satirist's wit. Hammett wrote the man he feared he might be — tenuous and skeptical in all human dealings, corruptible and addicted to violent intrigue. He stayed on the job. The job defined him.
— James Ellroy, from his Introduction in the Everyman's Library edition of The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Selected Stories
