The Dain Curse – Dashiell Hammett Free Audiobook

Written by Dashiell Hammett
Read by Richard Ferrone
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Continental Op, book 2
Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
Release date: 10-06-11
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The Continental Op is a short, squat, and utterly unsentimental tank of a private detective. Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young, wealthy, and a devotee of morphine and religious cults. She has an unfortunate effect on the people around her: they have a habit of dying violently. Is Gabrielle the victim of a family curse? Or is the truth about her weirder and infinitely more dangerous?

Everything about the Leggett diamond heist indicated to the Continental Op that it was an inside job. From the stray diamond found in the yard to the eyewitness accounts of a “strange man” casing the house, everything was just too pat. Gabrielle Dain-Leggett has enough secrets to fill a closet, and when she disappears shortly after the robbery, she becomes the Op’s prime suspect. But her father, Edgar Leggett, keeps some strange company himself and has a dark side the moon would envy. Before he can solve the riddle of the diamond theft, the Continental Op must first solve the mystery of this strange family.

The novel, which is more a collection of short stories, follows the investigations of an audacious, but never named, detective as he seeks to discover why everyone around a peculiar young woman keeps dying. The novel is peopled with fascinating figures brought vividly to life by a most imaginative reader.

It is an atmospheric prohibition era detective novel with an incredibly complex plot that sorts it’s self out at the end. The essence is the authentic period dialog and the world weary detective following a maze of crimes.