The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
3.93 of 5 stars
3.93 · rating details · 52,847 ratings · 2,613 reviews
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

Sam Spade will not play the sap for you. Shove off before you lose some teeth, because Sam will sniff out your game and disarm you without disturbing the curling black ash of his cigarette. At the San Francisco detective agency of Spade and Archer, they won’t believe your story, but they will believe your $200 cash retainer—which goes a long way towards establishing good faith in the 1920’s.



Also wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hardboiled detective novels and short stories. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in the New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction."
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell..