The Maltese Falcon

“When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it.” —Sam Spade

A physically menacing character—“he looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan”—Detective Sam Spade is a lone wolf with an ambiguous moral compass. When his partner gets killed during a tense stakeout, he’s plunged headfirst into an entangled web of deceit, greed, and murder involving an extraordinary treasure with a shady backstory—the Maltese Falcon, a priceless bejeweled bird.

Dashiell Hammett was a master of hard-boiled fiction, revolutionizing American detective stories with the archetypal tough guy character: aloof, sharp, and relentless. Hammett’s classic gumshoe mysteries reflected the gritty realism of his own turbulent life, from wartime experiences and political activism in the post-WWI Red Scare to a stint as a Pinkerton detective.