The Maltese Falcon

Did this book give birth to hardboiled literature? No, but I feel it mothered and fathered it. 

Did this book—when filmed in 1941—give rise to film noir? I would say yes or “oui.”

This book lives on in libraries and bookstores, in minds and memories, on screens big and small, as a cultural masterpiece. But please don’t get me wrong about masterpiece. Hammett’s existential story of antiheroic private detective Sam Spade wriggling out of death as he fends off the cagey but crazed pursuers of a worthless “jeweled” bird breathes more deeply, more compellingly every time I re-read it. Through… show more.

It might not impress all the cocktail party goers, though it ought to! Brilliantly plotted, unforgettable characters, terse compelling prose, and probably the best MacGuffin of all time. I must have read this novel half a dozen times, and each time, I come away more in awe of Hammett’s flawless craftsmanship.

The book also knows its own pedigree. It is a story about a cynical modern knight searching for a medieval artifact. The world he is moving through, however, is a fallen one, and so the treasure is flawed. The damsel in distress is also not quite the maiden she… show more.

This novel immediately plunged me into a world of lies and deception, and it retains its air of non-stop tension no matter how many times I re-read it.

I love the cast of colorful characters that populate a grim world of greed and self-interest, where trust is extended at great risk, and the private agent must look out for himself. Sam Spade lives by his wits and his fists. 

His simple code is tested by the pull of personal and professional temptation presented by a rare, valuable, and dubious relic. Who doesn’t love that formula? 

Dashiell Hammett, more than any other author, created the hardboiled anti-hero. He’s also a damn fine prose writer. I re-read one of his books every year because of this, hoping perhaps to absorb his spare, elegant style. Each sentence is brutally trimmed of any excess and yet resonates with layered meaning. 

Dashiell Hammett himself was a broken hero. He fought in two World Wars for his country and yet was sent to jail by the committee for un-American activities for refusing to name names. He was a communist, who yet, as a young man, worked for the fascist, union-busting Pinkertons.… show more.

This book proves that plots can both be tight and make no sense at the same time while still telling a story that holds our interest. The Maltese Falcon is a mystery that never gets solved, but by the end, you understand the point that Hammett wanted us to understand: for criminals, the world is a greedy mess, and chasing dark dreams for them is what they want more than catching the dream. The book is better than the movie, and the movie is fantastic.

Hammett and Raymond Chandler were the founding fathers of the hard-boiled crime genre. This iconic novel features San Francisco private investigator Sam Spade. Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, are hired for a job by an attractive young woman and almost immediately Archer is murdered. Spade, who has been having an affair with his partner’s wife, must now hunt down Archer’s killer while dealing with a group of curious and untrustworthy con artists who are hunting for a very valuable and long-lost statuette.

The Maltese Falcon is the prototype for a historical PI mystery, even if it was written in 1929, the time that it took place. Sam Spade is the PI that generations of writers emulated with their protagonists. He is a wise cracking tough guy with his own set of principles that don’t always stack up the same as the law. Where he is stark, black, and white in a tumultuous time, the supporting cast is a colorized version of glittering personalities that gives flavor to a mystery full of plot twists and layers of deceit, lies, and corruption. 

As the father of the hard-boiled PI novel, Dashiell Hammett takes the reader through San Francisco, using full advantage of the fog, the streets and intersections, the drug stores and eateries, and the horn on Alcatraz Island to create an indelible sense of the city circa 1930. Many sites still stand, including John’s Grill on Ellis Street, a steakhouse where detective Sam Spade eats a meal near the end of the novel. Several years ago I visited John’s Grill. After I showed my Mystery Writers of America membership card and said how thrilled I was to be there, the server… show more.

This classic crime story set the pattern for many private eye stories to come. The fast-paced story unfolds as characters try their best to double-cross each other in the space of hours. Noir wasn’t invented in this book, but it sure got a big kick in the right direction by Hammett.

Much like Chandler gave writers of PI novels a standard of wit and intricate plotting to aim for, Dashiell Hammett, with Sam Spade, sets the standard for the profile of the hard-boiled PI. He’s endowed with the flaws all men (or most of us) are heir to, but unlike most of us, he has principles and, quirky and self-defeating though they may be, he’ll hold to them no matter what paycheck, peril, or seductress attempts to lure him away. So many others have called The Maltese Falcon the best PI novel ever published, I won’t bother.