Like you, Hammett saw the power that short, terse sentences can have when filled with characterization. I've often wondered if he has been an influence. I am determined to create a cohesive and seamless versmillitude. Thus I never think about it. The Rampart scandal currently plaguing LAPD represents not endemic LAPD corruption, but the actions of a misguided criminal few.
Most police officers are decent men and women doing a difficult job under great duress.
Your book, Breakneck Pace, is coming out as an original ebook from Contenville. I do not have a computer. It's a goooooooooooooooood movie - and a better book. I think that Jack Kennedy, by the rules he lived by, got what he deserved, and people should quit thinking of his death as the end of American innocence - because American innocence has never existed. Your depicion of late 50's So Cal suburbia was memorable in My Dark Places.