The Maltese Falcon

An Apple Books Classic edition.

Dashiell Hammett’s landmark detective novel introduced Sam Spade, a private eye who operates by his own slippery moral code in a world where everyone lies and almost no one gets out unscathed.

When a beautiful woman walks into Spade’s San Francisco office with a story that’s obviously fake, he takes the case anyway. Within hours, his partner is dead and Spade himself is a suspect. The hunt for a jewel-encrusted statue called the Maltese Falcon pulls him into a tangle of thieves, killers, and con artists, all willing to betray each other for a shot at the prize.

Spade plays every angle, trusting no one—not the cops, not his clients, and especially not the woman whose lies started it all. With a lean, brutal narrative that’s impossible to put down, The Maltese Falcon invented the hard-boiled detective and remains the template for every morally ambiguous hero that’s followed.