Before Sam Spade, before Philip Marlowe, before Mike Hammer, before Lew Archer, and before every hard-boiled detective in mystery fiction there was the Continental Op. Who was he? No one knows, since Dashiell Hammett never gives his name. Reporting to the 'Old Man' at the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency, the Op is short and fat (by his own description) but extremely tough as these twenty stories testify. Through such famous tales as "The Tenth Clue", "Zigzags of Treachery", "The Girl with the Silver Eyes", and "The Golden Horseshoe" among others, we see the Op solve crimes, usually murder, in and around San Francisco and Northern California while being shot at, assaulted, and dishing punishment better than he receives it. This collection includes the very first Continental Op story, "Arson Plus".