The Maltese Falcon (Paperback)

Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammetts archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandlers Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammetts Sam Spade novels (including The Dain Curse and The Glass Key), Spade is tough enough to bluff the toughest thugs and hold off the police, risking his reputation when a beautiful woman begs for his help, while knowing that betrayal may deal him a new hand in the next moment.

Spades partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he cant provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spades solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed.

Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the movie, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman “Angel” and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guys perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If youre riveted by Chinatown or wonder where Robert B. Parkers Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master. –Barbara Schlieper