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The Maltese Falcon
A famous mystery novel, by one of America’s greatest mystery writers
San Francisco, 1928. When his partner is murdered on an assignment, private detective Sam Spade is drawn into a dangerous case involving a treacherous femme fatale and the priceless black statuette of a falcon...
A coolly glittering gem of detective fiction that has haunted three generations of readers, from one of the greatest mystery writers of all time.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He is widely acknowledged as one of America’s greatest mystery writers.
Crimina
A paperback and e-book series published by Intra
Global readability, Italian charm
- GenresClassics
188 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 15, 2025
About the author
Dashiell Hammett
793 books3,038 followersAlso wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett
Dashiell Hammett, an American, wrote highly acclaimed detective fiction, including The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934).
Samuel Dashiell Hammett authored hardboiled novels and short stories. He created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) among the enduring characters. 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell...
Dashiell Hammett, an American, wrote highly acclaimed detective fiction, including The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934).
Samuel Dashiell Hammett authored hardboiled novels and short stories. He created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) among the enduring characters. 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 16, 2026
Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon was first serialized in Black Mask magazine 1929-1930, then published later in 1930 in book form. Hammett is often considered the granddaddy of noir, and many think MF to be the best mystery ever written. I don’t know why it took me so long to read it? I did see the movie a time or two, but that was 40-50 years ago. Thanks to the late great Donald Westlake, reading The Getaway Bus, finally gave me the right shove, to get the read done. Hammett, as well as an excellent writer, was once a Pinkerton detective, and he truly knew the nature of the hardboiled dick. He also was able to combine in Sam Spade, a nasty, cynical, untrusting and self serving anti-hero, who possessed however a personal moral code, and backbone that reflected the hard ass detective of those times.
Hammett with the creation of Sam Spade, the west coast private eye, then spawned Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, who beget Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and so on. All somewhat different, but honoring the tradition of the detective code of honor… willing to cross many lines, but staying mostly faithful to the rules of their trade. —Back to Hammett, a master writer and storyteller, depicting the time, place and the characters of it, with originality and authenticity. Nearly a century later, it still rings true. But perhaps, beyond story, was his masterful ability to deliver a line. And the lines in Maltese Falcon are plentiful —ranging from shocking to lol… This reader heard the lines delivered in the the voices of Bogie, Lorie, and Greenstreet… I confess to failing to recall Mary Astor’s Brigid, Effie’s, the kid Wilmer’s, or the coppers’ voices. I must correct that with another film viewing. Here though follows some highlights, and many of those great lines.
“Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose— He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan. He said to Effie Perine: “Yes, sweetheart?” “a girl wants to see you. Her name’s Wonderly.” “she’s a knockout.” “Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.” She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. “Now what can I do for you, Miss Wonderly?” “Could you—? I thought—I—that is—” “Suppose you tell me about it, from the beginning, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin as far back as you can.” “That was in New York.” “She’s five years younger than I—only seventeen—and Mama and Papa are in Europe. It would kill them. I’ve got to get her back before they come home.” “They’re coming home the first of the month.” Spade’s eyes brightened. “Then we’ve two weeks,” —“ went there again this morning, and still didn’t see Corinne, but I saw Floyd Thursby.” “He wouldn’t tell me where Corinne was,” she went on, hopelessly. “He wouldn’t tell me anything” —“It’s all right, Miles,” Spade told him. “Come in. Miss Wonderly, this is Mr. Archer, my partner.” —Spade & Archer are on the case, and each pocket $100. Archer is interested in Miss Wonderly -volunteers to handle the first night shift…
Spade awakens to a phone call… and heads out into… “San Francisco’s night-fog, thin, clammy, and penetrant, blurred the street. Spade crossed the sidewalk —opened above bare ugly stairs, went to the parapet, and, resting his hands on the damp coping, looked down into Stockton Street. Lights flickered on the sidewall, and the shadows of men moving among lights. — “What do you want here?” “I’m Sam Spade. Tom Polhaus phoned me.” “Well, they’re back there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Bad business.” —In the notch between boulder and slope Miles Archer lay on his back. One of them hailed Spade. -barrel-bellied tall man with shrewd small eyes, a thick mouth, and carelessly shaven dark jowls. “I figured you’d want to see it before we took him away,” “Got him right through the pump—with this.” He took a fat revolver from his coat-pocket and held it out to Spade. “A Webley. English, ain’t it?” “That’s it. Thirty-eight, eight shot. They don’t make them any more.” “He was shot up here, huh? Standing where you are, with his back to the fence. The man that shot him stands here.” —“nobody didn’t come out of here while he was coming down from Powell or he’d’ve seen them. The only other way out would be under the billboard on Stockton.— fog’s got the ground soggy, and the only marks are where Miles slid down and where this here gun rolled. “Coming down for a look at him before he’s moved?” Spade said: “No.” “Was he working Sam?” “He was supposed to be tailing a fellow named Floyd Thursby,” “What for?” “He was an Englishman, maybe. I don’t know what his game was, exactly. We were trying to find out where he lived.” —Sam took a hand from his pocket to pat Tom’s shoulder. “Don’t crowd me.” He put the hand in his pocket again. “I’m going out to break the news to Miles’s wife.”
Well that’s the setup, to get you into, or for a revisit, to the search for the black bird. But will tease you with a few more highlights and choice lines…
“What do you want, Dundy?” he asked in a voice hard and cold as his eyes. Lieutenant Dundy’s eyes had moved to maintain their focus on Spade’s. —Spade, ignoring Tom, said to Dundy: “Well, what do you want? Talk turkey. Who in hell do you think you are, coming in here trying to rope me?” What are you sucking around for? Tell me, or get out and let me go to bed.” “Who’s Thursby?” Dundy demanded. “I told Tom what I knew about him.” “You told Tom damned little.” —“here’s something for you to not forget, sweetheart. I’ll tell it or not as I damned please. It’s a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn’t like me.” He turned his face around to Tom and asked with great carelessness: “What’s itching your boy-friend now?”
“Help me. I’ve no right to ask you to help me blindly, but I do ask you. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You can help me. Help me.” “You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. You’re very good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice when you say things like ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.’ — “I deserve that,” she said. “I deserve it, but—oh!—I did want your help so much.” — “It is my own fault that you can’t believe me now.” Spade’s face reddened and he looked down at the floor, muttering: “Now you are dangerous.”
“Mr. Spade to see you, Mr. Wise.” She looked up at Spade. “Go right in.” “So Miles got the big one last night?” “Uh-huh, that’s what I came in about.” “I think I’m going to have to tell a coroner to go to hell, Sid. Can I hide behind the sanctity of my clients’ secrets and identities and what-not, all the same priest or lawyer?” “Why not? An inquest is not a court-trial. You can try, anyway.” “Get your hat, Sid, and we’ll go see the right people. I want to be safe.”
“Effie Perine was sitting at Sam’s desk. Spade sat on the desk and asked: “Anything stirring?” “Not here. You look like you’d swallowed the canary.” He grinned contentedly. “I think we’ve got a future. How’s your woman’s intuition today?” “Why?” “What do you think of Wonderly?” “I’m for her,” the girl replied without hesitation. “She’s got too many names,” Spade mused, “Wonderly, Leblanc, and she says the right one’s O’Shaughnessy.” “Anyway she’s given up seven hundred smacks in two days, and that’s all right.” — “Sam, if that girl’s in trouble and you let her down, or take advantage of it to bleed her, I’ll never forgive you” — Effie Perine rose and went into the outer office. —returned with an engraved card—Mr. Joel Cairo. “This guy is queer,” Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-boned dark man of medium height. His features were Levantine. A square-cut ruby, its sides paralleled by four baguette diamonds, gleamed against the deep green of his cravat. — The fragrance of chypre came with him. “Now what can I do for you, Mr. Cairo?” “I am trying to recover an—ah—ornament that has been—shall we say?—mislaid. I thought, and hoped, you could assist me. The ornament is a statuette, the black figure of a bird.” —Cairo smiled and took a short compact flat black pistol out of an inner pocket. “You will please,” he said, “clasp your hands together at the back of your neck. -I intend to search your offices, Mr. Spade. I warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you.” —Spade’s elbow went on past the astonished dark face and straightened when Spade’s hand struck down at the pistol. Cairo let the pistol go the instant that Spade’s fingers touched it. The pistol was small in Spade’s hand.— Cairo’s face was twisted by pain and chagrin. There were tears in his dark eyes. The fist struck Cairo’s face, covering for a moment one side of his chin, a corner of his mouth, and most of his cheek between cheek-bone and jaw-bone. Cairo shut his eyes and was unconscious. — When the last pocket had been turned out he returned to his own chair, rolled and lighted a cigarette, and began to examine his spoils. —Cairo said through his teeth, painfully: “I could have shot you, Mr. Spade.” “You could have tried,” “Then why did you strike me after I was disarmed?” “Sorry,” Spade said, and grinned wolfishly, showing his jaw-teeth, “but imagine my embarrassment when I found that five-thousand-dollar offer was just hooey.” “You are mistaken, Mr. Spade. That was, and is, a genuine offer.” “You could come in and say you’d pay me a million for a purple elephant, but what in hell would that mean?” “I see, I see,” — “You wish some assurance of my sincerity. A retainer, would that serve? … “You will take, say, a hundred dollars?” Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he frowned, said, “Better make it two hundred,” and did.”
“We won’t have to make anything public that hasn’t already been made public.” “The police won’t have to know about me?” “No.” “However did you manage it?” she asked more in wonder than in curiosity. “Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.” “And you won’t get into trouble?” “I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” he said with not too much complacence. —He looked at her with eyes that studied, weighed, judged… She flushed slightly under the frankness of his stare. “You aren’t,” he asked as he sat down, “exactly the sort of person you pretend to be, are you? — “Schoolgirl manner,” he explained, “stammering and blushing and all that.” “I told you this afternoon that I’ve been bad—worse than you could know.” “That’s what I mean,” “same words, same tone. It’s a speech you’... — Spade grinned sidewise at her and said: “You’re good. You’re very good.” —She suddenly moved close to him on the settee and cried angrily: “Can I buy you with my body?” Spade took her face between his hands and he kissed her mouth roughly and contemptuously. “I’ll think it over.”
“Her right hand went out and cracked sharply against his cheek, leaving the imprint of fingers there. Cairo grunted and slapped her cheek, staggering her sidewise… Spade caught Cairo by the throat and shook him. Cairo gurgled and put a hand inside his coat. Spade grasped the Levantine’s wrist, wrenched it away from the coat, forced it straight out to the side, and twisted it until the clumsy flaccid fingers opened to let the pistol fall… “This is the second time you’ve put your hands on me.” His eyes, though the throttling pressure on his throat made them bulge, were cold and menacing. “Yes,” Spade growled. “And when you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it.”
First time, or revisited ‘you’ll take it and like it.’ Or, as you choose my 10 pgs. of highlights are visible.
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/22806...
Hammett with the creation of Sam Spade, the west coast private eye, then spawned Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, who beget Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and so on. All somewhat different, but honoring the tradition of the detective code of honor… willing to cross many lines, but staying mostly faithful to the rules of their trade. —Back to Hammett, a master writer and storyteller, depicting the time, place and the characters of it, with originality and authenticity. Nearly a century later, it still rings true. But perhaps, beyond story, was his masterful ability to deliver a line. And the lines in Maltese Falcon are plentiful —ranging from shocking to lol… This reader heard the lines delivered in the the voices of Bogie, Lorie, and Greenstreet… I confess to failing to recall Mary Astor’s Brigid, Effie’s, the kid Wilmer’s, or the coppers’ voices. I must correct that with another film viewing. Here though follows some highlights, and many of those great lines.
“Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose— He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan. He said to Effie Perine: “Yes, sweetheart?” “a girl wants to see you. Her name’s Wonderly.” “she’s a knockout.” “Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.” She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. “Now what can I do for you, Miss Wonderly?” “Could you—? I thought—I—that is—” “Suppose you tell me about it, from the beginning, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin as far back as you can.” “That was in New York.” “She’s five years younger than I—only seventeen—and Mama and Papa are in Europe. It would kill them. I’ve got to get her back before they come home.” “They’re coming home the first of the month.” Spade’s eyes brightened. “Then we’ve two weeks,” —“ went there again this morning, and still didn’t see Corinne, but I saw Floyd Thursby.” “He wouldn’t tell me where Corinne was,” she went on, hopelessly. “He wouldn’t tell me anything” —“It’s all right, Miles,” Spade told him. “Come in. Miss Wonderly, this is Mr. Archer, my partner.” —Spade & Archer are on the case, and each pocket $100. Archer is interested in Miss Wonderly -volunteers to handle the first night shift…
Spade awakens to a phone call… and heads out into… “San Francisco’s night-fog, thin, clammy, and penetrant, blurred the street. Spade crossed the sidewalk —opened above bare ugly stairs, went to the parapet, and, resting his hands on the damp coping, looked down into Stockton Street. Lights flickered on the sidewall, and the shadows of men moving among lights. — “What do you want here?” “I’m Sam Spade. Tom Polhaus phoned me.” “Well, they’re back there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Bad business.” —In the notch between boulder and slope Miles Archer lay on his back. One of them hailed Spade. -barrel-bellied tall man with shrewd small eyes, a thick mouth, and carelessly shaven dark jowls. “I figured you’d want to see it before we took him away,” “Got him right through the pump—with this.” He took a fat revolver from his coat-pocket and held it out to Spade. “A Webley. English, ain’t it?” “That’s it. Thirty-eight, eight shot. They don’t make them any more.” “He was shot up here, huh? Standing where you are, with his back to the fence. The man that shot him stands here.” —“nobody didn’t come out of here while he was coming down from Powell or he’d’ve seen them. The only other way out would be under the billboard on Stockton.— fog’s got the ground soggy, and the only marks are where Miles slid down and where this here gun rolled. “Coming down for a look at him before he’s moved?” Spade said: “No.” “Was he working Sam?” “He was supposed to be tailing a fellow named Floyd Thursby,” “What for?” “He was an Englishman, maybe. I don’t know what his game was, exactly. We were trying to find out where he lived.” —Sam took a hand from his pocket to pat Tom’s shoulder. “Don’t crowd me.” He put the hand in his pocket again. “I’m going out to break the news to Miles’s wife.”
Well that’s the setup, to get you into, or for a revisit, to the search for the black bird. But will tease you with a few more highlights and choice lines…
“What do you want, Dundy?” he asked in a voice hard and cold as his eyes. Lieutenant Dundy’s eyes had moved to maintain their focus on Spade’s. —Spade, ignoring Tom, said to Dundy: “Well, what do you want? Talk turkey. Who in hell do you think you are, coming in here trying to rope me?” What are you sucking around for? Tell me, or get out and let me go to bed.” “Who’s Thursby?” Dundy demanded. “I told Tom what I knew about him.” “You told Tom damned little.” —“here’s something for you to not forget, sweetheart. I’ll tell it or not as I damned please. It’s a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn’t like me.” He turned his face around to Tom and asked with great carelessness: “What’s itching your boy-friend now?”
“Help me. I’ve no right to ask you to help me blindly, but I do ask you. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You can help me. Help me.” “You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. You’re very good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice when you say things like ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.’ — “I deserve that,” she said. “I deserve it, but—oh!—I did want your help so much.” — “It is my own fault that you can’t believe me now.” Spade’s face reddened and he looked down at the floor, muttering: “Now you are dangerous.”
“Mr. Spade to see you, Mr. Wise.” She looked up at Spade. “Go right in.” “So Miles got the big one last night?” “Uh-huh, that’s what I came in about.” “I think I’m going to have to tell a coroner to go to hell, Sid. Can I hide behind the sanctity of my clients’ secrets and identities and what-not, all the same priest or lawyer?” “Why not? An inquest is not a court-trial. You can try, anyway.” “Get your hat, Sid, and we’ll go see the right people. I want to be safe.”
“Effie Perine was sitting at Sam’s desk. Spade sat on the desk and asked: “Anything stirring?” “Not here. You look like you’d swallowed the canary.” He grinned contentedly. “I think we’ve got a future. How’s your woman’s intuition today?” “Why?” “What do you think of Wonderly?” “I’m for her,” the girl replied without hesitation. “She’s got too many names,” Spade mused, “Wonderly, Leblanc, and she says the right one’s O’Shaughnessy.” “Anyway she’s given up seven hundred smacks in two days, and that’s all right.” — “Sam, if that girl’s in trouble and you let her down, or take advantage of it to bleed her, I’ll never forgive you” — Effie Perine rose and went into the outer office. —returned with an engraved card—Mr. Joel Cairo. “This guy is queer,” Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-boned dark man of medium height. His features were Levantine. A square-cut ruby, its sides paralleled by four baguette diamonds, gleamed against the deep green of his cravat. — The fragrance of chypre came with him. “Now what can I do for you, Mr. Cairo?” “I am trying to recover an—ah—ornament that has been—shall we say?—mislaid. I thought, and hoped, you could assist me. The ornament is a statuette, the black figure of a bird.” —Cairo smiled and took a short compact flat black pistol out of an inner pocket. “You will please,” he said, “clasp your hands together at the back of your neck. -I intend to search your offices, Mr. Spade. I warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you.” —Spade’s elbow went on past the astonished dark face and straightened when Spade’s hand struck down at the pistol. Cairo let the pistol go the instant that Spade’s fingers touched it. The pistol was small in Spade’s hand.— Cairo’s face was twisted by pain and chagrin. There were tears in his dark eyes. The fist struck Cairo’s face, covering for a moment one side of his chin, a corner of his mouth, and most of his cheek between cheek-bone and jaw-bone. Cairo shut his eyes and was unconscious. — When the last pocket had been turned out he returned to his own chair, rolled and lighted a cigarette, and began to examine his spoils. —Cairo said through his teeth, painfully: “I could have shot you, Mr. Spade.” “You could have tried,” “Then why did you strike me after I was disarmed?” “Sorry,” Spade said, and grinned wolfishly, showing his jaw-teeth, “but imagine my embarrassment when I found that five-thousand-dollar offer was just hooey.” “You are mistaken, Mr. Spade. That was, and is, a genuine offer.” “You could come in and say you’d pay me a million for a purple elephant, but what in hell would that mean?” “I see, I see,” — “You wish some assurance of my sincerity. A retainer, would that serve? … “You will take, say, a hundred dollars?” Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he frowned, said, “Better make it two hundred,” and did.”
“We won’t have to make anything public that hasn’t already been made public.” “The police won’t have to know about me?” “No.” “However did you manage it?” she asked more in wonder than in curiosity. “Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.” “And you won’t get into trouble?” “I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” he said with not too much complacence. —He looked at her with eyes that studied, weighed, judged… She flushed slightly under the frankness of his stare. “You aren’t,” he asked as he sat down, “exactly the sort of person you pretend to be, are you? — “Schoolgirl manner,” he explained, “stammering and blushing and all that.” “I told you this afternoon that I’ve been bad—worse than you could know.” “That’s what I mean,” “same words, same tone. It’s a speech you’... — Spade grinned sidewise at her and said: “You’re good. You’re very good.” —She suddenly moved close to him on the settee and cried angrily: “Can I buy you with my body?” Spade took her face between his hands and he kissed her mouth roughly and contemptuously. “I’ll think it over.”
“Her right hand went out and cracked sharply against his cheek, leaving the imprint of fingers there. Cairo grunted and slapped her cheek, staggering her sidewise… Spade caught Cairo by the throat and shook him. Cairo gurgled and put a hand inside his coat. Spade grasped the Levantine’s wrist, wrenched it away from the coat, forced it straight out to the side, and twisted it until the clumsy flaccid fingers opened to let the pistol fall… “This is the second time you’ve put your hands on me.” His eyes, though the throttling pressure on his throat made them bulge, were cold and menacing. “Yes,” Spade growled. “And when you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it.”
First time, or revisited ‘you’ll take it and like it.’ Or, as you choose my 10 pgs. of highlights are visible.
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/22806...
April 28, 2025
I'm glad to have read it, but frankly, there really isn't a single character in the book that was remotely likeable. Sam Spade is to be fair, an asshole. I was rooting for a secondary character to gun him down abruptly with little fanfare and hide the body in an alley.
Seriously.
I liked the writing and if the goal was to create a character that was really just an asshole, success but I didn't have any fun with it. Spade isn't a man's man, or anything admirable. In the end, he was the whiniest of all of them; the sap he said he would play for nobody.
Seriously.
I liked the writing and if the goal was to create a character that was really just an asshole, success but I didn't have any fun with it. Spade isn't a man's man, or anything admirable. In the end, he was the whiniest of all of them; the sap he said he would play for nobody.
April 29, 2025
I know that at the time it was probably suspenseful and gripping - and not that it isn't today - but I laughed most of my way through The Maltese Falcon.
The author was a master at setting up risky situations, simply by playing chess games with characters. If this one leaves the room with that one, what information could they spill that could put Sam Spade (the lead character) in hot water? Spade, it turns out, plays that game better than all of the rest combined, including the damsel in distress, the money man, the gunslinger, the local cops, all of them.
This book just oozes everything there is to love about the noir detective genre and it feels to me like it may well have been the standard. Spade is a tough bastard who is living the single life, even playing his women off each other like the crooks he works with for a living. He plays the long con with the criminals with whom he comes in contact while searching for the famed falcon statuette. He'll take a punch if he has to, to get to the bottom of a case. And he never, ever, shows his hand.
The story is full of twists, turns and cliffhangers, hinting at a follow-up volume until the final words play out. For me, one of the most fun connections I see is a potential tie-in to the FX TV animated spy series Archer. In that show one of the long-running subplots is the main character's constant search for the identity of his father. He grows up alone with his mother (and forms an unnatural attachment to her) and in flashbacks to his youth, life is depicted in a noir-like world. Sam Spade's partner in the detective agency was Miles Archer. Sam was having an affair with Archer's wife. Could Sam Spade have been Archer's father?
We will never know.
The author was a master at setting up risky situations, simply by playing chess games with characters. If this one leaves the room with that one, what information could they spill that could put Sam Spade (the lead character) in hot water? Spade, it turns out, plays that game better than all of the rest combined, including the damsel in distress, the money man, the gunslinger, the local cops, all of them.
This book just oozes everything there is to love about the noir detective genre and it feels to me like it may well have been the standard. Spade is a tough bastard who is living the single life, even playing his women off each other like the crooks he works with for a living. He plays the long con with the criminals with whom he comes in contact while searching for the famed falcon statuette. He'll take a punch if he has to, to get to the bottom of a case. And he never, ever, shows his hand.
The story is full of twists, turns and cliffhangers, hinting at a follow-up volume until the final words play out. For me, one of the most fun connections I see is a potential tie-in to the FX TV animated spy series Archer. In that show one of the long-running subplots is the main character's constant search for the identity of his father. He grows up alone with his mother (and forms an unnatural attachment to her) and in flashbacks to his youth, life is depicted in a noir-like world. Sam Spade's partner in the detective agency was Miles Archer. Sam was having an affair with Archer's wife. Could Sam Spade have been Archer's father?
We will never know.
August 24, 2025
Fast engaging read
I liked how quickly the book moved. The character of Sam Spade was very colorful. I cannot wait to see the movie.
I liked how quickly the book moved. The character of Sam Spade was very colorful. I cannot wait to see the movie.
May 28, 2026
Totally get why this ended upon on that “every man should read” book list. The protoganist is very stoic, showed almost no emotion, and the idea that who you are is shown by the values you stick to, even when it would be easier or benefit you more to give them up. Not something I would agree with to define a man, but more often then not keeping your cool keeps you on top. I also really enjoyed the 1920s–30s old timey phrasing throughout the book, like “take it on the lam,” and words like “sap” and “louse”. Made it feel like one of those old gangster movies where everyone wears fedoras and smokes too much.
December 27, 2025
Gads…well written, great use of language. BUT, the women - I couldn’t stand how they were portrayed. Simpering little fools - even the murderer. Oh, and our gay characters didn’t come out well either. I understand, books and their times, but good grief….
October 4, 2026
A classic that puts the film in front of you. Full of the flavors of 1930's San Francisco.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews