Reading group: Why The Maltese Falcon is built to last

The powerful prose and plot, the morality and the smouldering Spade … There are many reasons why Dashiell Hammett’s detective novel is such a classic

So said Dashiell Hammett in 1928, writing to the publisher Blanche Knopf. (Thanks to Reading Group contributor JulieRivett for supplying the quote.) That “some day” came around pretty soon. In 1929, he published The Maltese Falcon – and if that isn’t “literature”, I don’t know what is.

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