The Maltese Falcon: The Restored Text

by Dashiell Hammett

SELECTED AS ONE OF THE TOP 5 MYSTERY NOVELS OF ALL TIME (MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA)

The best-selling detective story by Dashiell Hammett, now restored from the original text.

Time called The Maltese Falcon “one of the best mystery and thriller books [ever written].” The story’s impact has been profound, influencing the likes of Raymond Chandler and inspiring the Oscar®-winning film Chinatown. Here the classic is restored to Hammett’s original words. While other versions of the book contain dozens of editorial changes and corruptions, this new edition features the complete unabridged text, meticulously reproduced from the 1930 book. Each page was verified word by word and mark by mark, then corrected for typos to make for a clean reading experience.

This special edition of The Maltese Falcon all-new reproduction of Hammett’s original 1930 textRestored passages not found in many other editions todayDetailed annotations that give deeper insights into the storyDesign elements and layout that mimic the original book
IT IS THE late 1920s in San Francisco. A perfumed swindler, a slick fat man, and a red-headed femme fatale have all converged here in connection with some fabled and priceless artifact. In their footsteps stalks Samuel Spade, a veteran private eye with a blond-satan’s face, a wolfish grin, and his own code of ethics. After two men are murdered, Spade will stop at nothing—save for the frequent rolling of cigarettes and the occasional roll in the hay—to untangle the mystery of who killed the men and who has the Maltese falcon.

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

Published in the USA

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2026

About the author

Also wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett

Dashiell Hammett, an American, wrote highly acclaimed detective fiction, including The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934).

Samuel Dashiell Hammett authored hardboiled novels and short stories. He created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) among the enduring characters. In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in the New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell...

Reviews

[Patrick King · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, I think, the fifth time I've read The Maltese Falcon but this particular version is the original text that appeared in Black Mask Magazine from 1930. This is nicely annotated with explanations about Hammett's use of terms and spellings more conventional 90 years ago than they are today. Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, is the original "hard boiled" detective and reading it today, having read many hard boiled novels from Raymond Chandler's complete works to Ross MacDonald's, to James Ellroy's, no one so far has come up with a more involving plot nor a tougher detective than Sam Spade. I read this book the other day very quickly and I think I enjoyed it more than I did when I read it at 14, 63 years ago. There are quite a few additions in this version that do not appear in the earliest published book versions, Rhea Gutman for example. While I can understand why they cut her out, she adds another level of perversion to this coven of sociopaths Hammett invented almost a century ago. If you've seen John Huston's movie from 1941, both the story and the dialogue are nicely lifted from the book. The book, on the other hand, offers much more information about the historic evidence for the iconic "black bird." I've read three biographies of Dashiell Hammett and no author has gone to the trouble to explain where Hammett got the amazing concept for "the stuff that dreams are made of." That line, by the way, was ad-libbed by Bogart from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and is not in the novel. The Maltese Falcon is a fabulous book and very satisfying read even 96 years later.