"Nightmare Town" is among the more popular short novels by Dashiell Hammett, who was at the top of his writing game when this story was first published in 1924.
The story presents a seemingly ordinary town - Izzard, Arizona - whose social order is deeply distorted by crime, deception, and shifting loyalties. The plot chiefly revolves around Steven Threefall, a stranger who wanders into the small, eerie town on a bender and winds up uncovering a dark Prohibition-era conspiracy involving illegal booze and an insurance scam.
The story has an almost surreal quality: Izzard feels less like a stable community than a fever dream governed by fear and opportunism. Hammett uses that setting to expose how thin the boundary between law and lawlessness can be.
"Nightmare Town" is presented here in its original and unabridged format and has been narrated by renowned audiobook performers David Blixt, Kevin Theis and Sara Nichols.
