My Cousin Dashiell Hammett

After many years of researching my family tree, I have learned definitively that legendary mystery writer Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, The Dain Curse, Red Harvest, and others) is my cousin.  Hammett, or "Dash" as he was known, is the fourth generation grandson of my fifth generation paternal grandfather.  That makes him my fifth cousin once removed.  While I can't therefore say that we were ever drinking buddies, I'm proud to share a little DNA with a man whose books are still in print and whose novels were made into very successful films.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in 1894 and died in 1961.  The New York Times said that he was "The dean of the . . . hard-boiled school of detective fiction."  Later, Time magazine said that his novel Red Harvest was one of the top 100 novels published in America between 1923 and 2005.  Famed mystery writer Raymond Chandler said that "Hammett was the ace performer.  He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all.  He wrote scenes that seemed to have never been written before."

Hammett was a detective for The Pinkerton Detective Agency, which spurred him to write in the mystery genre.  In addition to writing bestselling novels and numerous short stories, he also worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

I look back over my life and have to smile when I recall that the first novel I read was a Perry Mason mystery when I was seven years old.  I was so taken with the genre that I wrote a three-page Perry Mason mystery and sent it to the author of the Mason series, Erle Stanley Gardner.  Gardner was kind enough to write back, encouraging me to keep writing.

I won't make the claim that I love to write because Dashiell Hammett is a cousin, although it's a nice thought during one of my Walter Mitty moments.  It does make me reflect, however, on how people are connected and what those connections mean.  It's said that everyone is seven steps from Kevin Bacon.  Turns out that I'm five steps from Dashiell Hammett on the Hammett family tree.  I'll take it!

~William Hammett

Contact wmhammett@aol.com 

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