Elevating mystery fiction to the level of art, Hammett is one of the finest writers of the twentieth century: "Nightmare Town" is a stunning collection of twenty short stories with an introduction by Colin Dexter. In the title story, a man on a bender enters a small town and ends up unravelling the dark mystery at its heart. In three stories, Sam Spade confronts the darkness in the human soul while rolling his own cigarettes. A woman confronts the brutal truth about her husband in the chilling story, "Ruffian's Wife". And the first study for "The Thin Man" sends John Guild on a murder investigation in which almost every witness may be lying. In "Nightmare Town" Hammett shows us a world where people confront a multitude of evils ..."Hammett was spare, hard-boiled, but he did over and over what only the best writers can ever do. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before" - Raymond Chandler. "Anybody who doesn't read Dashiell Hammett misses much of modern America" - Dorothy Parker. "As a novelist of realistic intrigue, Hammett was unsurpassed in his own or any time" - Ross Macdonald.