So I Shot Him, an unpublished story by Dashiell Hammett, is to be published Feb. 28 in The Strand magazine. So I Shot Him, an unpublished story by Dashiell Hammett, is to be published Feb. 28 in The Strand magazine. (Associated Press)

An unpublished story by crime writer Dashiell Hammett is to be released in Feb. 28 in The Strand magazine.

So I Shot Him is one of 15 undated short stories by Hammett found in the archives at the University of Texas at Austin. The 19-page crime thriller uses the spare style Hammett is known for.

Hammett turned his experience as a Pinkerton detective to create hard-boiled detective characters such as Sam Spade.

Famous for The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon and The Continental Op, he published his last book in 1937.

He then served during the Second World War and was blacklisted for his Communist sympathies during the 1950s. He died in 1961 of lung cancer.

Andrew Gulli, managing editor of The Strand, a quarterly based in Birmingham, Mich., has recently published little-known works by Graham Greene, Mark Twain and Agatha Christie.

With files from The Associated Press