Named one of Time Magazine's 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time, The Maltese Falcon is an intense and immersive hard-boiled detective novel that inspired multiple adaptations-including the popular film noir classic staring Humphrey Bogart. This stunning new collector's hardcover edition includes brand new black-and-white illustrations, a foil printed cover, and gorgeous sprayed edges. Brilliant detective Sam Spade is the quintessential private eye, with his own code of ethics. When a standard stakeout goes wrong and Spade's partner is killed, he finds himself drawn into the hunt for a fantastic treasure of dubious origin-a golden bird encrusted with jewels. But he's not the only one on the trail of the Falcon. Hot on his heels are Joel Cairo, a perfumed grifter; an oversized adventurer named Gutman; and Spade's new client Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful but treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a hat. A classic that redefined the genre, The Maltese Falcon is a must read for mystery fans. "Dashiell Hammett…is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." "The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel." "Hammett's prose is clean and entirely unique. His characters are as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction." "Sixty years after its initial publication, The Maltese Falcon remains one of the most skillfully written detective novels in the history of the genre." "[Hammett] was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before." "Like Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle, Hammett was an original who created a profoundly influential literary template that gives him classic status." "If you can show me 20 books written approximately 20 years back that have as much guts and life now [as The Maltese Falcon], I'll eat them between slices of Edmund Wilson's head." "After reading The Maltese Falcon, I went mooning about in a daze of love such as I had not known for any character in literature since I encountered Sir Launcelot." "The Maltese Falcon was one of the best books of its kind ever written. It struck the publishing world and reading world-which is something entirely distinct from the literary world-like a thunderclap. Nothing has been the same since." "The best detective story America has yet produced."
