A shy but gentle man named Clifford Skridlow is a professor of comparative literature at the financially-strapped fictional Monroe College in Chicago. A chance encounter with four beautiful women at a restaurant changes his life forever.

“This is an entirely imaginary story about the writer Dashiell Hammett, who… in the words of one of his most gifted contemporaries… helped get murder out of the vicar’s rose garden and back to the people who are really good at it. The detective story has not been the same since.” So begins Hammett, the atmospheric and exciting tale of a young mystery writer who really lives the hard-boiled life he writes about — and learns to dig beneath the surface of his characters to reveal their deeper, darker motivations.