July’s Murder Mystery Book Club Selection: Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon “The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel.”

–The Times Literary Supplement (London) ~ “Hammett’s prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.”

–The New York Times ~

“Dashiell Hammett . . . is a mas- ter of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer."

–The Boston Globe

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyal- ties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the in- gredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted generations of readers.

- From The Maltese Falcon book cover THE MALTESE FALCON

Think about the following while reading the novel:

1) The significance of Sam Spade’s “Tale of Flitcraft.”

2) Spade’s various relationships with the novel’s 3 female characters (Effie Perine, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and Iva Archer), and how each of these women are portrayed.

3) Spade’s code of ethics, if any.

4) The concept of “manliness”, and how Spade’s masculinity compares to the novel’s other male characters; specifically, Joel Cairo, Miles Archer, and Wil- mer Cook.

5) The way in which homosexual characters are treated in the novel.

6) The way in which the characters, primarily Spade, regard authority.

7) The characters’ use of deception as a means to an end.

8) Spade’s character development during the course of the novel, if any.

9) Whether any character can truly be referred to as “trustworthy.”

10) The novel’s final scene.

11) The effect of the author’s unerring 3rd-person point of view on the novel as a whole.

12) What the falcon symbolizes, if anything.