The Maltese Falcon - Paperback

by Dashiell Hammett (Author)

A priceless object. A handful of people willing to lie, betray, and kill for it. And at the center, a man who knows exactly what everyone is doing--and how far he is willing to go himself. The Maltese Falcon strips the detective story to its core: not the solving of a crime, but the negotiation of a world where nothing is binding and everything has a price. What remains is the pure tension between desire and restraint, knowledge and action, self-interest and the faint, stubborn outline of a code.

Author Biography

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was an American novelist and former Pinkerton detective whose work transformed crime fiction into a modern literary form. Drawing on his experience in private investigation, he introduced a new kind of prose--hard, economical, and unsentimental--that would define the genre. His novels, including The Maltese Falco and The Thin Man, remain foundational to both noir fiction and twentieth-century American literature.