UNCOMMON MYSTERIES: Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1929)

With The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett started an entirely new, entirely American variety of detective novel—the hard-boiled mystery. To be fair, Hammett has to share the credit with other writers for the pulp magazine Black Mask, where The Maltese Falcon first appeared in serial episodes starting in September, 1929.

One of the features of hard-boiled fiction is that everybody lies. Brigid O’Shaugnessy, who says her name is Wonderly, comes to consult Sam Spade and Miles Archer. She makes up a name, makes up a sister, makes up a story. And it is no surprise to Spade. “Oh, we didn’t believe your story,” he says to O’Shaugnessy, “we believed your two hundred dollars.” Then, almost immediately, Archer is murdered; the man, Floyd Thursby, whom Wonderly says first helped, then betrayed her is murdered; Joel Cairo, a perfumed “Levantine” with a small gun that Spade easily takes away comes to offer Spade money and then to search for the Maltese Falcon, a figurine he says is worth a huge fortune; and the police give Spade a hard time over the death of Miles Archer because they know he was having an affair with Archer’s wife, Ida. Spade lies to them. The detective lies; everybody lies. Even physical objects participate in the deception: the black bird is not what it has promised to be.

            A teenaged gunsel named Wilmer starts tailing Spade, who becomes romantically, but not emotionally involved with O’Shaugnessy, who tells him a different story of her search for the figurine. A man named Casper Gutman offers Spade a partnership in the pursuit of the falcon. A dying ship’s captain deposits the statuette at Spade’s office, and spade puts it in a bus locker and mails the key to himself. In a long final scene everything is resolved, and Spade reveals that he knew who the murderer of Miles Archer was all along. The solving of the crime takes a back seat to the butting of heads in this sort of fiction.

            The lack of sentimentality in Spade’s taking Archer’s name off the door the morning after his death, his brushing-off of Ida, his refusal to shield O’Shaugnessy despite having been her lover—these are characteristic of the hard-boiled hero, and so is the code that allows him to take money from the bad guys over what may be stolen property while he makes the killer of his partner pay for the crime. The spare dialogue and gritty settings are also a part of this sort of mystery, and the fairly small (but real) role played by the detective’s figuring things out.