Typed Letter Signed in Pencil “SDH” from Dashiell Hammett

Aleutians: 1 page, quarto, March 11, 1945. Written while a soldier in World War II to Prudence Whitfield, wife of fellow Black Mask writer Raoul Whitfield, and Hammett’s mistress. A remarkable letter in which Hammett responds to a statement that Joseph Shaw, his editor at Black Mask magazine in which he published his greatest work, to the effect that Hammett would never write again. “...I don’t remember having told Joe Shaw I’d never write fiction again. It sounds like one of the things people say now and then, offhand or to make a point, so I won’t say I didn’t. All I can say is if I did it just shows what kind of liar I can be, since I’m deep in notions - they’re still too hazy to be called ideas - for a novel I’ll do this spring and summer if I stay on the island...” Hammett is involved in army life “...I spent Thursday on the rifle range, didn’t finish my firing, and will go out again as soon as the weather and the range schedule permit. I had -- as I usually do on that - a good time, though it can safely be said, even at this point, that I’m not going to establish any new world records...This is Sunday morning - two-thirty - and I’ve had only a hour and a half sleep since six-forty-five Friday morning. That leaves my antique eyelids quite heavy. I think I ought to take’em over to my quonset and lean’em on my pillow....”