The Maltese Falcon cover art

The Maltese Falcon

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

The Maltese Falcon

By: Dashiell Hammett
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £12.83

Buy Now for £12.83

Season's Savings | £0.99/mo for 3 months

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly

The definitive masterpiece of the hard-boiled detective genre, The Maltese Falcon first appeared in the pages of Black Mask magazine in 1929 and was almost immediately acknowledged as not only a great crime novel but an enduring masterpiece of American fiction.

Tough, cynical PI Sam Spade—a man who, as his creator explained, is “able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with”—is hired by the story’s irresistible femme fatale, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, to locate the client’s sister by tailing her companion. Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, takes on the assignment, and quickly both he and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner’s death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters—all of them after a legendary statuette of a falcon fashioned long ago for King Charles V of Spain.

Made of gold and encrusted with jewels, the falcon is worth a fortune. Missing for centuries, it resurfaced in Paris in 1911, covered in black enamel to disguise its value, and then disappeared again until it was traced to Constantinople—and now, it would seem, to Spade’s own backyard.

©1929 , 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. © renewed 1956, 1957 by Dashiell Hammett (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing Classics Crime Fiction Historical Modern Detectives Mystery Romance Romantic Comedy Fiction Comedy Crime
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Critic reviews

“Hammett’s prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.”

(New York Times)

“Jumps from the pages of its genre and into literature…Dorothy Parker, never a pushover,…claimed to have read the novel some thirty or forty times…Hammett was an original who created a profoundly influential literary template.”

(Guardian (London))

“Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel…One of the best-known detective novels ever printed.”

(Washington Post)

“The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel.”

(Times Literary Supplement (London))

“Dashiell Hammett…is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer.”

(Boston Globe)
All stars
Most relevant
enjoyed listening to this classic detective story, so different from today's private eye tales so enjoy

classic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thoroughly recommended. 5 stars great story well read. And at least as good as the movie

Terrific

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Firstly, l prefer Chandler to Hammett. However, the Maltese Falcon is a true classic of the noir genre. As such, this was a wonderful listen, very well read, although the narrator's breadth of voices could have been better.

A classic well read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved it, great characters, good plot and wonderfully narrated. Shame there's not more books here

Great listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I think I’ve heard more energy and enthusiasm at a funeral. Someone check Mr Hammett’s pulse to see if he’s still with us as he seemed to be drifting away as he was reading this.

I loved the film and the story but I just couldn’t get through this monotonous reading of the book. There’s almost no change in tone to express suspense or action, and he barely changes his voice with character dialogue.

I found myself really switching off of this audio book and almost falling asleep!

If you don’t mind his narration like I did you’ll enjoy the book if you’re enthusiastic about mysteries.

Someone check Mr Hammett’s pulse

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews