The 100 best novels: No 54 – The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929)
Raymond Chandler, who has yet to appear in this series, once said: “Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did, he did superbly.” He added, in a summary that helps define Hammett’s achievement: “He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he …
Michael Murphy flipped this story into History and mystery•3488d