Hammett died in Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on January 10, 1961, of lung cancer, diagnosed just two months before.

In 2011, magazine editor Andrew Gulli found fifteen previously unknown short stories by Dashiell Hammett in the archives of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. [72] Collections [ edit ] Novels [ edit ]Woman in the Dark. Knopf, 1988. Hardcover collection of the three parts of the title novelette, with an introduction by Robert B. Parker. ISBN 978-0-394572-69-7 Dashiell Hammett's Mystery Omnibus. New York: World Publishing. 1944. Includes The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key. The Maltese Falcon, September 20, 1943, The Screen Guild Theater (with Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre) After the Thin Man (Screen story submitted to MGM September 17, 1935; first published in Return of the Thin Man)

Hellman wrote that Hammett was "most certainly" a Marxist, though a "very critical Marxist" who was "often contemptuous of the Soviet Union" and "bitingly sharp about the American Communist Party", to which he was nevertheless loyal. [35] :12–13Layman, Richard (1981). Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 239. ISBN 0-15-181459-7. Duggan, Eddie (2000) Sfhea, Eddie Duggan (January 2000). "Dashiell Hammett: Detective, Writer". Crimetime. 3 (2): 101–114 – via Academia.edu. Hammett served time in a West Virginia federal penitentiary, where, according to Lillian Hellman, he was assigned to clean toilets. [46] [47] Hellman noted in her eulogy of Hammett that he submitted to prison rather than reveal the names of the contributors to the fund because "he had come to the conclusion that a man should keep his word." [48]