The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett's crime thriller and its hard-boiled hero Sam Spade influenced everyone from Chandler to Le Carre ... The Maltese Falcon is the Hammett novel that jumps from the pages of its genre and into literature * GUARDIAN *
His name remains one of the most important and recognisable in the crime fiction genre. Hammett set the standard for much of the work that would follow * INDEPENDENT *
One of the foremost practitioners of the hard-boiled detective story * THE SCOTSMAN *
The dean of the school of hard-boiled fiction * NEW YORK TIMES *
He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used -- Raymond Chandler
He is master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer * BOSTON GLOBE *
The first fully "hard-boiled" hero in American letters * NEW YORKER *