Hammett's 1930 detective novel is widely regarded as the first and finest novel of the hard-boiled private detective. Sam Spade has a cold detachment, keen eye for detail and an unflinching determination to achieve his own justice. Regarded by many as the greatest crime novel of the 20th century, it has been ranked in the top 100 of English-language novels. The Maltese Falcon has been filmed several times, most famously by John Huston with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade.

Miss Gabriel Dain Leggett is young and wealthy, with a penchant for morphine and religious cults. She also has an unfortunate effect on the people around her. They die — violently. Is she the victim of a family curse? The short, squat, utterly unsentimental Continental Op, the best private detective around, has his doubts and finds himself confronting something infinitely more dangerous. This is the Continental Op's most bizarre case.

New books in the Penguin Active Reading series, edited into simplified text together with exercises designed to develop language skills.

Ned Beaumont is a tall, thin, moustache-wearing, TB-ridden, drinking, gambling, hanger-on to the political boss of a corrupt Eastern city. Nevertheless, like every Hammett hero (and like Hammett himself), he has an unbreakable, if idiosyncratic moral code. Neds boss wants to better himself with a thoroughbred senators daughter; but does he want it badly enough to commit murder? If hes innocent, who wants him in the frame? Beaumont must find out.

The Maltese Falcon set the standard by which the private eye genre is judged. Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?