Best first paragraph: Hammett

What’s the best first paragraph in crime fiction? Dashiell Hammett was a great crime fiction stylist. Here’s the best opening to one of his novels.

(If you’ve read some Hammett, I bet you think I’m going to talk about The Maltese Falcon. In the first paragraph of that classic, Hammett describes detective Sam Spade as looking “rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.” …It’s great. But I’m not going to talk about that one.)

Hammett’s best first paragraph: Red Harvest

Here’s the opening of Red Harvest, Hammett’s first novel. The detective he calls only “the Continental Op” heads to a corrupt small town.

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

We learn that the Op’s a man who goes to rough places with cheap alcohol. He knows the jokes thieves make. Hammett also introduces Personville, which is a central character in the book.

And we get the voice. …The voice of Hammett and the Op. The worldly, experienced voice of a man who mixes with criminals. A man who, in the course of the book, will do criminal things for decent ends.

Hammett’s trademark for his first paragraphs

It also has that Hammett trademark: the kicker in the final sentence of the paragraph (the “blond Satan” plays this role in The Maltese Falcon.) If a writer’s trying to hook a reader into his book with the first paragraph, the writer needs to make the opening paragraph carry all the qualities of the entire book. Information about the kind of book it is …and where it might be going. As well as a clever line that jumps our eye further into the book.

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