Dashiell Hammett tells tight, twisty detective tales with colourful casts and propulsive plots, but half the fun of reading him comes from the language itself: the wisecracks, the tough talk, the economical detail.
The title story in his collection The Big Knockover has a huge cast of criminals, crooks, and assorted no-goodniks, many with stereotypical nicknames. Here’s 30 or so, some with additional description from Hammett:
Red O’Leary
The Shivering Kid
Itchy Maker
Darby M’Laughlin
Happy Jim Hacker, round and rosy Detroit gunman twice sentenced to death and twice pardoned
Alphabet Shorty McCoy
Donkey Marr, the last of the bow-legged Marrs
Rumdum Smith
Lefty Read
Toots Salda, the strongest man in crookdom
Sylvia Yount
The Dis-and-Dat Kid
Bernie Bernheimer, alias the Motsa Kid
Sheeny Holmes
Snohomish Shitey
Bluepoint Vance
L. A. Slim, from Denver, sockless and underwearless as usual
Spider Girrucci
Old Pete Best, once a congressman
Fat Boy Clarke
Red Cudahy
Pogy Reeve
Tom Brooks, who invented the Richmond razzle-dazzle and bought three hotels with the profits
Big Flora Brace
Nancy Regan
Denny Burke, Baltimore’s King of Frog Island
Bull McGonickle, still pale from fifteen years in Joliet
Johnny the Plumber
Paddy the Mex, an amiable conman who looked like the King of Spain
Paperbox-John Cardigan
Angel Grace Cardigan
Toby the Lugs, who used to brag about picking President Wilson’s pocket in a Washington vaudeville theatre
*
Alphabet Shorty McCoy offers two nicknames for the price of one. I don’t know if he got both at the same time or was just Shorty McCoy for a while first.
Hammett himself went to jail for a while. His long-time partner Lillian Hellman tells the story in the book’s fine introduction.
Sentence first 
Love this list. Such evocative names and descriptions. Thanks for sharing.
Nancy Regan? Who knew. One letter more and she’d be an actor-turned-politician’s wife. Great list. Great post. Thank you.
Liked the refresher course. I wonder what Lillian thought? H’m.
XO
WWW
wellturned: They are fun, aren’t they. Thanks for stopping by.
Elizabeth: Nancy Regan (along with Tom Brooks) is probably the most normal name in the set, and taken as a whole they feel quite authentic.
WWW: In her introduction she says of the stories:
While he was alive, Hammett turned down offers to republish the stories; Hellman never knew why, but sometimes thought “he was just too ill to care, too worn out to listen to plans or read contracts”. I have her book Pentimento on the shelf, and will report back when I get around to it.
Quite a sprinkling of Irish names there. I guess we have a gangster streak in us…! Who knew?
Nurn: Yes, taken as a whole there’s a decidedly Irish flavour to the set. Our reputation precedes us.
[…] of Couffignal’, a great story that opens The Big Knockover and Other Stories (whose colourful crooks’ names I listed recently). Skip the first paragraph if you want to avoid […]