How did Dashiell Hammett die?

Ellery the character was himself a detective story writer, a snobbish, almost priggish Harvard-educated intellectual of independent wealth who wore a pince-nez and investigated and solved crimes solely because he found them stimulating. He derived these characteristics from his mother, the daughter of a rich aristocratic New York family who had married Inspector Queen, a bluff, man-in-the-street New York Irishman, and died before the stories began. His mannerisms in the first nine or ten novels were apparently based on those of the then-extremely popular Philo Vance character of the same era. As time went on, however, these mannerisms were toned down or disappeared entirely, to the point where he became a near-faceless, near-characterless persona whose role in the books was purely to solve the mystery.