The Maltese Falcon
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Article in Adult Fiction, Big Read, Historical, and Mystery categories.
Contents |
About the Author
Dashiell Hammett based his "hard-boiled" detective fiction on personal experiences. Leaving home at 13 and working a variety of odd jobs, he was employed by the Pinkerton Agency from 1915 to 1922, except for a tour as an ambulance driver during the Great War. He quit detective work partly from disillusionment from the agency's participation in strike-breaking.
Sam Spade's office was modeled on Hammet's own apartment in San Francisco.
Other Works by Dashiell Hammett
- Bedside Tales: A Gay Collection includes "Two Knives" a short story funny enough for Peter Arno to choose it.
- The Continental Op, a selection of
short stories featuring the unnamed protagonist of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse.
- Nightmare Town selected stories.
Film Adaptations
A scene from the 1931 movie starring Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels.
Warner Brothers released a lighter (and less sexually explicit) version in 1936 starring Bette Davis, entitled Satan Met A Lady
The trailer from John Huston's 1941 adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor.
Art Theft
The Los Angeles Police Department's Art Theft Detail hosts a site with news, summaries of real cases, and even puzzles allowing you to guess whether a work is real or fake.
- Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World by Sharon Waxman
- Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin by Susan Nagel
- The Napoleon of Crime: the Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief by Ben Mcintyre
- Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman
- The Rape of Europa: the Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicholas
- Vanished Smile:: the Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti
Some Other Works in the Hard-Boiled Style
- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
- Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
- Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
- Huge by James Fuerst
- Classic noir as interpreted by a 12-year-old. For high school/adult readers.
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia
- Hard-boiled, but with more than a grain of salt in the water.
Hammett's Legacy
The International Association of Crime Writers (North American branch) awards the yearly Hammett Prize for "literary excellence in the field of crime-writing, as reflected in a book published in the English language in the US and/or Canada." See past winners here.
