Which author created the detective known as the Continental Op?

Dashiell Hammett created the detective known as the Continental Op. The character first appeared in the October 1923 issue of the pulp magazine Black Mask, where Hammett drew on his own experience as a Pinkerton detective to create a hard-boiled private investigator.

The Continental Op works for the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco office during the 1920s. He narrates the stories in the first person, but Hammett never gives him a personal name. “Op” is short for operative, reflecting his professional role rather than a nickname or surname.

The character appeared in dozens of short stories and in two serialized novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, both published in book form in 1929. Hammett’s use of terse dialogue, moral uncertainty, physical violence, and urban corruption helped define hard-boiled detective fiction. Readers sometimes confuse the Op with Hammett’s other famous detective, Sam Spade, but Spade is the investigator of The Maltese Falcon and is a separate character.