The Op resolves his two problems neatly by manipulating events so that the corrupt detective and the informant get into an armed confrontation in which both are killed.

Decades of witnessing human cruelty, misery, and ruin, as well as being instrumental in sending hundreds of people to jail, or to the gallows, have greatly weakened the Op's natural sympathy with his fellow men.

In the penultimate chapter of The Dain Curse, a female client, whose life the Op has saved three times, while also curing her of morphine addiction, says to him: The Op is one of the first major hardboiled detectives[1] later developed in such characters as Hammett's own Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer and others.

The Continental Op made his debut in the October 1923 issue of Black Mask, making him one of the earliest hard-boiled private detective characters to appear in the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century.

Frederic Dannay, half of the duo using the pseudonym Ellery Queen, compiled and edited the Hammett's stories such that these versions are not complete.

Of the 28 stories not a part of Red Harvest or The Dain Curse, 26 have been made available in one of three collections, The Big Knockover,[13] The Continental Op,[14] and Nightmare Town.

For the first two printings of this collection, as is said in the Notes on the Texts: "No copy is known to be extant of the issue of the pulp magazine Mystery Stories in which 'This King Business' initially appeared, in January 1928."