Continental Op

[Vince]

I’ve been eying the Continental Op stories on the wanted list for a while. I bought The Big Book of the Continental Op shortly after it came out; it contains all 28 of the stories as originally published in Black Mask (two in other magazines), including the unfinished one, and both of the novels. In the case of The Dain Curse, it has the original serialization from Black Mask titled The Cleansing of Poisonville, which is a very different animal than Red Harvest; it’s a shame we can’t make the original versions available somehow. But never mind, this is about the short stories.

Since it’s now 2026, the last two stories, originally published in Black Mask in 1930, are now PD, so all 28 stories could be included.

I’ve searched unsuccessfully for scans of Black Mask from the period in question. IA has a few from earlier and later, but nothing in the years that Hammett wrote for them. The Luminist Archives have a number of editions, but again, nothing in from 1923-1930 when Hammett wrote for them. Neither do the other usual suspects, and a broader internet search hasn’t turned up anything, either. It’s a bit surprising.

The Library of America book mentioned in the wanted listing only contains 20 of the Op stories; the other four included stories are from Hammett but don’t contain the Op.

So, while The Big Book says it contains the stories as originally printed, we have no scans to confirm that; the same is true, of course, of L of A.

Are we out of luck until someone finds scans (or microfilm) somewhere?

[Vince]

Grrr; that should be “In the case of Red Harvest, it has… But again, never mind, this is about the short stories. :)

[Alex Cabal]

I'm skimming the preface to Big Book and while they clearly state that
the Dain Curse and Red Harvest stories are the original printings, it's
not clearly stated if the rest of the stories are (unless I missed it
somewhere).

I don't have a copy of the Library of America book, but I mentioned it
based what I researched online, so we'd need to secure scans/a copy of
that to see if the research is actually true.

I suggest first finding a copy of the Library of America book and
confirming that it states that the stories are first editions. If so, we
can use that for the first 20.

Then, it seems like at least some Black Mask issues are available for
purchase as facsimile editions (e.g.
https://steegerbooks.com/shop/the-scorched-face-the-complete-black-mask-cases-of-the-continental-op-volume-3/),
so if the issues for the missing stories are available, SE could just
buy copies of the facsimiles and you could work off those.

On 1/18/26 12:06 PM, Vince wrote:
> I’ve been eying the Continental Op stories on the wanted list for a

> while. I bought /The Big Book of the Continental Op <https://
> www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Continental-Op/dp/0525432957?
> keywords=the+big+book+of+continental+op> /shortly after it came out/; /
> it//contains all 28 of the stories as originally published in /Black
> Mask /(two in other magazines), including the unfinished one, and both
> of the novels. In the case of /The Dain Curse/, it has the original
> serialization from /Black Mask /titled /The Cleansing of Poisonville, /
> which is a very different animal than /Red Harvest; /it’s a shame we

> can’t make the original versions available somehow. But never mind, this
> is about the short stories.
>

> Since it’s now 2026, the last two stories, originally published in /
> Black Mask/ in 1930, are now PD, so all 28 stories could be included.
>
> I’ve searched unsuccessfully for scans of /Black Mask/ from the period

> in question. IA has a few from earlier and later, but nothing in the

> years that Hammett wrote for them. The Luminist Archives <https://
> www.readitfree.org/PU/BM.htm> have a number of editions, but again,

> nothing in from 1923-1930 when Hammett wrote for them. Neither do the
> other usual suspects, and a broader internet search hasn’t turned up
> anything, either. It’s a bit surprising.
>
> The Library of America book mentioned in the wanted listing only
> contains 20 of the Op stories; the other four included stories are from
> Hammett but don’t contain the Op.
>

> So, while /The Big Book/ says it contains the stories as originally

> printed, we have no scans to confirm that; the same is true, of course,
> of L of A.
> Are we out of luck until someone finds scans (or microfilm) somewhere?
>

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[Alex Cabal]

Actually the copyright page for the Library of America Hammett book is
viewable on Amazon and it has all the right years for the stories in
there except for two, "Woman in the Dark" (c) 1934 (maybe that's not an
Op story) and an early draft of "The Thin Man." So that book can
definitely be used as a source if you can secure it.

[Alex Cabal]

Also if you can't find a copy at a library or scans SE could just buy it
for you, a used copy is $10

[Vince]

On Jan 18, 2026, at 4:12 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Actually the copyright page for the Library of America Hammett book is viewable on Amazon and it has all the right years for the stories in there except for two, "Woman in the Dark" (c) 1934 (maybe that's not an Op story) and an early draft of "The Thin Man." So that book can definitely be used as a source if you can secure it.

Yes, I already checked that this morning. The same is true for the Big Book, so I could just use the one I have. :)

[Alex Cabal]

Oh ok great, fine then, you can just use that. The copyright page for
that book was not viewable on Amazon. As long as the FIRST listed year
for any story is 1930 or earlier then it's usable as a source.

On 1/18/26 4:17 PM, Vince wrote:
>> On Jan 18, 2026, at 4:12 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks
>> <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> Actually the copyright page for the Library of America Hammett book is
>> viewable on Amazon and it has all the right years for the stories in
>> there except for two, "Woman in the Dark" (c) 1934 (maybe that's not
>> an Op story) and an early draft of "The Thin Man." So that book can
>> definitely be used as a source if you can secure it.
>

> Yes, I already checked that this morning. The same is true for the /Big
> Book/, so I could just use the one I have. :)
>
> PastedGraphic-1.png
>
> PastedGraphic-2.png

>
>
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[Vince]

Yeah, for some odd reason they put it at the very end of the book, rather than on or adjacent to the copyright page at the front.

OK, perfect. This shouldn’t be too difficult, then.

Finding an appropriate “fine art image” will be a nightmare, but in honor of Scarlett, I’ll think about that tomorrow.

[Alex Cabal]

You can use any appropriate Black Mask cover. They're all pretty good.
Use an AI tool to remove the title. Please send a repo link and we can
assign the project.

[Vince]

On Jan 18, 2026, at 4:32 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

You can use any appropriate Black Mask cover. They're all pretty good. Use an AI tool to remove the title. Please send a repo link and we can assign the project.

Really? I had no idea they would be considered fine art paintings. lol

How about this one? What’s everyone using to remove the lettering from these covers? I know nothing about such things.

I’ll send the repo in a bit.

[Vince]

Before I create the repo—what do you want it to be titled? “The Continental Op,” Continental Op,” “The Continental Op Stories,” “Continental Op Stories,” or something else entirely?

<PastedGraphic-1.png>

[Alex Cabal]

Continental Op Stories. The image you suggested is in use by The Maltese
Falcon (it is the cover of the issue in which it appears)

There are already a few Black Masks in use, check the art DB

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[Vince]

Right, I knew that, since it says it right there on the cover, I just didn’t know it was used for our cover. (I haven’t paid attention to the new books, I’ve been sick since we got back.)

I searched the artwork for “black mask.” The first problem is one I’ve noted before—quoting keywords doesn’t do any good, it still searches for them individually (“black” and “mask”), thus returning a bunch of things I don’t want. My understanding from Mike the last time I brought this up is that he’d made changes to make that work, but maybe I’m misremembering. I’ll find the old issue and refresh my memory.

Second, even then, looking at the individual hits, I don’t see any “Black Mask” anywhere.

But then I thought—would there be? Would they be tagged as from the magazine? And sure enough they’re not—I looked at all three Hammett covers in the db, all of which came from Black Mask, and none of them have “Black Mask” in any of their metadata fields/tags. Sure, it’s obvious looking at them, but I’m not interested in browsing through several thousand artwork entries to find the ones that have the words “Black Mask” on them. :) Maybe we should include the magazine name as a tag when we get a cover from one?

Anyway, all that is to say this is not an instance where searching the artwork db is of any help.

[Vince]

Just to close the loop—I remembered correctly on the quoted phrase search, but we were discussing books at the time, not artwork. It works in ebooks, doesn’t work in artwork. I opened an issue.

[Vince]

Here’s the repo.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Emma will manage with Robin reviewing.

On 1/20/26 3:08 PM, Vince wrote:
> Here’s the repo <https://github.com/vr8hub/dashiell-hammett_continental-
> op-stories>.

>
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[Vince]

Alex, I know we just had a discussion elsewhere on balanced cover/titlepages where I sided with more balanced, but wouldn’t

[Alex Cabal]

Let's leave it how create-draft does it for now

On 1/20/26 6:46 PM, Vince wrote:
> Alex, I know we just had a discussion elsewhere on balanced cover/titlepages where I sided with more balanced, but wouldn’t
>
>
>
>

> be preferable over the (admittedly) more aesthetically balanced
>

[Vince]

OK, will do.

One of the stories is named “$106,000 Blood Money.” That resulted in an id of “106000-blood-money,” which lint complains about because id’s can’t start with a number. I looked through the section in id’s in SEMoS and didn’t see anything relevant. I tried running build-ids to see if it would do anything; it didn’t (I didn’t really expect it to, I just tried it on the off chance).

How do we handle situations like this? I could spell it out—one-hundred-and-six-thousand-dollars-blood-money.

[Emma Sweeney]

I think spelling it out is the best way to handle this.

Emma

[Alex Cabal]

I'd prefer to treat it how the make-url-safe function works, which is
that invalid characters are removed and the remaining spaces are
collapsed. So the equivalent would simply be `bloody-money` with no
numbers at all.

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[Vince]

I tried that first, it didn’t help.

>se make-url-safe "$106,000 Blood Money"

06-000-blood-money

>se make-url-safe "106000 Blood Money"

106000-blood-money

In the first case, make-url-safe only gets rid of the leading number(?). In the second case, it doesn’t get rid of any of them. I assumed it was because leading numbers are fine in a url, but not in an id. (Still shouldn’t get rid of the ‘1’ in the first case, I wouldn’t think.) Maybe we need a make-safe-id?

I'll use “blood-money” and change the filename as well.

[Alex Cabal]

$ is a special shell character, you must escape it:

> se make-url-safe "\$106,000 Blood Money"

106-000-blood-money

On 1/21/26 10:04 AM, Vince wrote:
> I tried that first, it didn’t help.
>
> >se make-url-safe "$106,000 Blood Money"
> 06-000-blood-money
>
> >se make-url-safe "106000 Blood Money"
> 106000-blood-money
>
> In the first case, make-url-safe only gets rid of the leading number(?).
> In the second case, it doesn’t get rid of any of them. I assumed it was

> because leading numbers are fine in a /url/, but not in an id. (Still

> shouldn’t get rid of the ‘1’ in the first case, I wouldn’t think.) Maybe
> we need a make-safe-id?
>
> I'll use “blood-money” and change the filename as well.
>
>
>> On Jan 21, 2026, at 9:08 AM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks
>> <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'd prefer to treat it how the make-url-safe function works, which is
>> that invalid characters are removed and the remaining spaces are
>> collapsed. So the equivalent would simply be `bloody-money` with no
>> numbers at all.
>>
>> On 1/21/26 12:54 AM, Emma Sweeney wrote:
>>> I think spelling it out is the best way to handle this.
>>> Emma
>>> On Wednesday, January 21, 2026 at 1:11:33 AM UTC-5 Vince wrote:
>>>    OK, will do.
>>>    One of the stories is named “$106,000 Blood Money.” That resulted in
>>>    an id of “106000-blood-money,” which lint complains about because
>>>    id’s can’t start with a number. I looked through the section in id’s
>>>    in SEMoS and didn’t see anything relevant. I tried running build-ids
>>>    to see if it would do anything; it didn’t (I didn’t really expect it
>>>    to, I just tried it on the off chance).
>>>    How do we handle situations like this? I could spell it out—one-
>>>    hundred-and-six-thousand-dollars-blood-money.
>

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[Vince]

Ah, the first one is a command-line thing; it’s interpreting the $; if I escape it then I get “106-000-blood-money”. That makes more sense.

So, make-url-safe leaves the leading numbers, but again, I assume that's ok for a url? I just tried creating a repository “813_some-file-name” in GiHub, and it let me.

So make-url-safe doesn’t help in this case. Knowing we should remove leading numbers for ID’s is fine, but it might be good to document that in SEMoS.

[Vince]

On Jan 18, 2026, at 4:32 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

You can use any appropriate Black Mask cover. They're all pretty good.

How about this one? From April, 1937. Since we can’t search what Black Mask covers are in the art DB, I can’t tell if this one is in use.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, but if it's from 1937 then how is it PD?

On 1/21/26 5:48 PM, Vince wrote:
>> On Jan 18, 2026, at 4:32 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks
>> <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> You can use any appropriate Black Mask cover. They're all pretty good.
>

> How about this one? From April, 1937 <https://s3.us-
> west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/PU/BM_1937_04.pdf>. Since we can’t search

> what Black Mask covers are in the art DB, I can’t tell if this one is in
> use.

> PastedGraphic-1.png

>
>
>
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[Vince]

Sigh. You ask such good questions, for which I don’t have a good answer. Did I mention I’ve been sick? OK, ok, nothing to do with that—I had in my head that all of them on the site were PD, but in reality I just hadn’t paid any attention to the dates. Even when stating one.

How about this one, from Sept. 1930? If this one works I’ll ask again what everyone is using to get rid of the text, and more importantly, how.

[Alex Cabal]

Yes I think that would be good. Pretty easy to get rid of all the text
on that one since it's on a uniform cream background. You can use the
clone tool in Gimp.

On 1/21/26 6:06 PM, Vince wrote:
> Sigh. You ask such good questions, for which I don’t have a good answer. Did I mention I’ve been sick? OK, ok, nothing to do with that—I had in my head that all of them on the site were PD, but in reality I just hadn’t paid any attention to the dates. Even when stating one.
>
> How about this one, from Sept. 1930? If this one works I’ll ask again what everyone is using to get rid of the text, and more importantly, how.
>
>
>
>
>

[Vince]

It turns out I could just paint out most of because of that uniform cream background you mentioned, and Lightroom, which I already have for photography, does a good job on what little was left.

[Alex Cabal]

Great! Since you have the source you can upload the artwork to the DB

On 1/21/26 6:27 PM, Vince wrote:
> It turns out I could just paint out most of because of that uniform cream background you mentioned, and Lightroom, which I already have for photography, does a good job on what little was left.
>
>
>
>

[Vince]

Done.

IA only has the cover, so no access to the title page that shows the illustrator. This site says it’s J. W. Schlaikjer, and Black Mask wiki’s page confirms that the covers were “usually painted by Fred Craft or J. W. Schlaikjer,” so it’s reasonable it was him and that’s what I went with. I followed what it looks like the standard is from the other Hammett Black Mask covers in the db and used the name of the story on the cover as the name of the painting.

[David]

I see you've already dealt with this, but just to give one response to the "what is everyone using?" question, I usually try this one first:

https://objectremover.com/

or this as an alternate:

https://www.pixelcut.ai/cleanup-pictures

There was also a recommendation for a GIMP plugin here in 2024, so also worth knowing about.

FWIW!