A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named 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. "Dashiell Hammett. . . is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." --The Boston Globe"The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel."--The Times Literary Supplement (London)"Hammett's prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction."--The New York Times