![]() ![]() It was made of gold and jewels by the 16th-century Knights of Malta as a gift to the King of Spain but was captured by pirates. The District Attorney ties the shootings to Dixie Monahan, a Chicago gambler who had employed Thursby as a bodyguard in the Far East.Īt a second meeting, Gutman tells Spade the history of the tribute of the Maltese Falcon. The police suspect Spade in the shootings: he was bedding Archer's wife, Iva. Spade implies he is looking out for himself, not O'Shaughnessy. When Spade meets Gutman in his hotel room, neither will tell what he knows. Effie agrees to hide her at her own home, but O'Shaughnessy disappears again. Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in the 1941 film adaptationĮffie believes O'Shaughnessy "is all right" and Spade should help her. Leaving her there, Spade slips out to search her apartment. The next morning, she is asleep in his bed. They meet with Cairo at Spade's apartment, and Spade again presses O'Shaughnessy for details again she stalls but kisses Spade. O'Shaughnessy begs for Spade's protection while telling him as little as possible. Others are after this falcon, including Joel Cairo, an effeminate Levantine homosexual, and Casper Gutman, a fat man accompanied by a vicious young gunman, Wilmer Cook. "Miss Wonderley" is soon revealed to be an acquisitive adventuress named Brigid O'Shaughnessy, who is involved in the search for a black statuette of unknown but substantial value. The next morning, Spade coolly tells his office secretary, Effie Perine, to have the office door repainted to read simply "Samuel Spade". Thursby is also killed later and Spade is a suspect. Archer takes the first stint but is found shot dead that night. The beautiful "Miss Wonderley" hires them to follow Floyd Thursby, who she claims has run off with her sister. Sam Spade is a private detective in San Francisco, in partnership with Miles Archer. Five years later, in a similar list by Mystery Writers of America, the novel was ranked third. In 1990 the novel ranked 10th in Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list by the Crime Writers' Association. Spade combined several features of previous detectives, notably his cold detachment, keen eye for detail, unflinching and sometimes ruthless determination to achieve his own form of justice, and a complete lack of sentimentality. The main character, Sam Spade (who also appeared later in some lesser-known short stories), was a departure from Hammett's nameless detective, The Continental Op. The novel has been adapted several times for the cinema. The story is told entirely in external third-person narrative there is no description whatsoever of any character's thoughts or feelings, only what they say and do, and how they look. Missing for centuries, it resurfaced in Paris in 1911, covered in black enamel to disguise its value, and then disappeared again until it was traced to Constantinople - and now, it would seem, to Spade's own backyard.The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask beginning with the September 1929 issue. Made of gold and encrusted with jewels, the falcon is worth a fortune. ![]() As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner's death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters - all of them after a legendary statuette of a falcon fashioned long ago for King Charles of Spain. Spade's partner, Miles Archer, takes on the assignment, and quickly both he and the man he was shadowing are murdered. Tough, cynical PI Sam Spade - a man who, as his creator explained, is "able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with" - is hired by the story's irresistible femme fatale, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, to locate the client's sister by tailing her companion. The definitive masterpiece of the hard-boiled detective genre, The Maltese Falcon first appeared in the pages of Black Mask magazine in 1929 and was almost immediately acknowledged as not only a great crime novel but an enduring masterpiece of American fiction. ![]()
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