Other editions of book The Maltese Falcon

A value-priced collection containing two of Dashiell Hammetts most legendary hard-boiled detective novels. The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New Yorks coolest crime-solving couple. Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nicks client. Nick cant resist, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities and cold-blooded murder. In The Maltese Falcon, PI Sam Spade is a loner who follows his own code and the rules of the street as he zeros in on his partners killer and the famous jewel-encrusted bird.

The Maltese Falcon is a 1929 detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask beginning with the September 1929 issue. The story has been adapted several times for the cinema. The main character, Sam Spade, appears in this novel and in three lesser-known short stories and is widely cited as the crystallizing figure in the development of the hard-boiled private detective genre. Raymond Chandler's character Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Hammett's Spade. Spade was a departure from Hammett's nameless detective, The Continental Op. Spade combined several features of previous detectives, notably his cold detachment, keen eye for detail, unflinching, sometimes ruthless, determination to achieve his own form of justice, and a complete lack of sentimentality.