Literature in English, North America Commons^™

The Continental Op And Women, Mary Freier

Mollie Freier

The Continental Op, by his own admission, does not fit the stereotype of the hardboiled detective. At five foot six, one hundred ninety pounds, he would be more likely to be played on film by Danny DeVito or Jason Alexander than Humphrey Bogart or Alan Ladd. However, Dinah Brand, the primary female character in Red Harvest, does not conform to the stereotype of the femme fatale. In many ways, the Op is much more practical than his counterparts in Hammett’s other fiction, and Dinah Brand, a large, powerful woman, is drastically different from her counterparts as well. In this paper, …