The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon
List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $6.37
You Save: $7.63 (54%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.46 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Dashiell Hammett
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1992-08
ISBN: 0679722645
Number of pages: 217
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780679722649
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Summary of The Maltese Falcon

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O?Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett?s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.
Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammett's 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.

Spade's 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 can't 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? Spade's 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 guy's perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If you're riveted by Chinatown or wonder where Robert B. Parker's Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master. --Barbara Schlieper

20th Century Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in 20th Century Books
Tortilla Flat (Penguin Classics) ImageTortilla Flat (Penguin Classics)
by John Steinbeck
Penguin Audio; Published: 2011-04-13; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $16.50
Price in other shops: $29.95
Passing (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) ImagePassing (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
by Nella Larsen
Penguin Classics; Published: 1997-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.88
Virginia (Penguin Classics) ImageVirginia (Penguin Classics)
by Ellen Glasgow
Penguin Classics; Published: 1989-09-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.90
Price in other shops: $12.95
YOU KNOW ME AL (Hudson River Editions) ImageYOU KNOW ME AL (Hudson River Editions)
by Ring Lardner
Scribner; Published: 1987-04-15; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops: $30.00
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald) ImageF. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald)
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cambridge University Press; Published: 1991-08-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $73.99
Price in other shops: $99.00
A Daughter of the Land (Library of Indiana Classics) ImageA Daughter of the Land (Library of Indiana Classics)
by Gene Stratton-Porter
Indiana University Press; Published: 1997-10-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.53
Price in other shops: $16.95
Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell ImageSouthern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell
by Darden Asbury Pyron
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1991-10-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.92
Price in other shops: $30.00
Joy in the Morning: A Novel (P.S.) ImageJoy in the Morning: A Novel (P.S.)
by Betty Smith
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2010-06-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.84
Price in other shops: $14.99
The Bad Seed (P.S.) ImageThe Bad Seed (P.S.)
by William March
Harper Perennial; Published: 2005-06-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.33
Price in other shops: $12.99
The Great Gatsby (A Scribner Classic) ImageThe Great Gatsby (A Scribner Classic)
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Collier Books; Published: 1992-06-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.94
Price in other shops: $9.00
Similar Books and other products
Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories ImageSix Great Sherlock Holmes Stories
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 1992-02-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.95
Price in other shops: $2.50
Double Indemnity ImageDouble Indemnity
by James M. Cain
Vintage; Published: 1989-05-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.47
Price in other shops: $13.00
The Thin Man ImageThe Thin Man
by Dashiell Hammett
Vintage; Published: 1989-07-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.90
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Laughing Policeman (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ImageThe Laughing Policeman (Vintage Crime/ Black Lizard)
by Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö
Vintage; Published: 2009-02-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.65
Price in other shops: $14.00
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Cordelia Gray Mysteries, No. 1) ImageAn Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Cordelia Gray Mysteries, No. 1)
by P.D. James
Touchstone; Published: 2001-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.44
Price in other shops: $15.00
The Mike Hammer Collection Volume 1 ImageThe Mike Hammer Collection Volume 1
by Mickey Spillane
NAL Trade; Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops: $16.00
Farewell, My Lovely ImageFarewell, My Lovely
by Raymond Chandler
Vintage; Published: 1992-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.79
Price in other shops: $14.95
Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) ImageDevil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins Mysteries)
by Walter Mosley
Washington Square Press; Published: 2002-09-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.41
Price in other shops: $15.00
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries) ImageThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
by Agatha Christie
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2011-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.34
Price in other shops: $12.99
The Big Sleep ImageThe Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
Vintage; Published: 1988-07-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.49
Price in other shops: $14.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories