by Dashiell Hammett (Author)
The chase is on. The body count is rising. And the only thing more dangerous than the criminals hunting the falcon is Sam Spade himself. A treasure worth killing for. A dame worth double-crossing for. A detective with a code he won't break-not even for love.
When a beautiful, treacherous woman calling herself Miss Wonderley walks into Sam Spade's San Francisco office, the cynical private eye smells trouble. Within hours, his partner, Miles Archer, is dead, and Spade is dragged into a labyrinth of greed, betrayal, and murder.
Everyone is hunting for the same thing: a jewel-encrusted statuette of a black bird-The Maltese Falcon.
Sam Spade is the original hardboiled hero-a tough, amoral man guided by his own solitary code of ethics. As he navigates a landscape populated by a perfumed grifter, a menacing gunsel, and the legendary "Fat Man" Casper Gutman, Spade must keep his wits sharp and his loyalties sharper. This is more than a mystery. It is a razor-sharp portrait of corruption, a literary masterpiece that codified the detective genre, and the source of the iconic film starring Humphrey Bogart.