The Maltese Falcon

By Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon, has been grouped critically with another of his later novels, The Thin Man (1934), in that these books established a new genre of detective story. These murder mysteries established a new form of gritty, hard-boiled crime story that relied on realism and modernism, thus setting them apart from the European tradition of genteel murder mysteries, such as those authored by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. The solitary private investigator who is a tough guy and a rugged individual, as portrayed by the protagonist, Sam Spade, combined with the modern investigative techniques that are used by the hero, which, in turn, drive the plot, became a style that was widely emulated by later mystery writers such as Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and Sue Grafton.

Another element of this genre of detective novel is the femme fatale character, which is placed in juxtaposition to the hero. This character in The Maltese Falcon is Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Both beautiful and intelligent, Brigid is an accomplished liar and a master manipulator. She is a very strong character who is loyal only to herself but changes allegiances at a whim when it suits her needs. There is instant sexual tension between Brigid and Sam, and it is never entirely clear when she is telling the truth or lying. The story begins when Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who falsely represents herself as Miss Wonderly, comes into Spade’s office, which he shares with his partner, Miles Archer. Brigid concocts a false story explaining how she has come to San Francisco from New York to find her sister Corinne, who supposedly has run away with an unscrupulous older man named Floyd Thursby. Brigid pays Spade and Archer two hundred dollars, a pricey sum in the 1920s, to follow Thursby. Archer agrees to stake out “Miss Wonderly’s” hotel that evening since Thursby is expected to show-up there. While on the assignment, Miles is shot and killed. Shortly thereafter Thursby is also murdered.

The police detectives, Lieutenant Dundy and Sergeant Tom Polhaus, as depicted in a series of interviews with Sam, suspect Spade in Thursby’s murder. Indeed, they suspect a possible revenge motive since they consider Thursby as the logical shooter of Sam’s partner. This theory is later complicated when rumors circulate that Spade had been having an affair with his Miles’s wife, Iva Archer. The plot is driven throughout the book by Sam attempting to solve the murders while, for the most part, keeping the police and the district attorney informed as little as possible, until the end, especially about his client, Brigid. Sam’s young secretary, Effie Perine, plays a continuous supporting role throughout the novel and is Sam’s most trusted ally.

As the plot unfolds, Sam is introduced to a series of unsavory characters, beginning with Mr. Joel Cairo, who Hammett refers to as “the Levantine.” A small framed and mannerly Greek who sports a perfumed handkerchief, Cairo offers to pay Sam five thousand dollars if he will help him recover a black bird ornament for its rightful owner, to whom Cairo is an employee. Cairo then pulls a small pistol on Spade and attempts to search him and his office, however, Sam quickly overpowers him and knocks him out. Sam eventually gives Cairo back his pistol and sends him on his way.

Spade next meets a fat man named Casper Gutman and his young thug named Wilmer. Wilmer had been shadowing Sam off and on for the last twenty-four hours or so and they had engaged in a verbal altercation in the lobby of Cairo’s hotel. In the novel Hammett portrays both Cairo and Wilmer as homosexuals. This fact is not central to the plot, but Hammett likely did this to add to their negative image, especially by contemporary standards. Gutman, who is physically grotesque but speaks in a refined and mannerly fashion, is a sadist who, at one point, beats and disfigures his own teenage daughter. It is through Gutman that Spade learns why the black bird ornament is so valuable.

The Maltese Falcon is a golden, jewel encrusted statue that the Kings of Rhodes intended as a gift for Emperor Charles V of Spain during the 1530s in exchange for granting them possession of the Island of Malta. The Falcon, lost in transit, never made it to Spain and changed hands numerous times over the next four centuries. Fearing that Sam and Brigid have information about the falcon’s whereabouts, Gutman, Wilmer, and Cairo drug Spade and Wilmer beats him. Now that these three are after Sam and the police and district attorney are trying to prove that Spade killed Archer and Thursby, Sam must trust his instincts and investigative abilities as well as his physical and mental toughness to try to solve the murders and find the falcon.

Sam sleeps with Brigid then searches her hotel suite while she is asleep in his apartment. Brigid goes temporarily into hiding but later, while acting in concert with Gutman, Wilmer, and Cairo, sets a trap for Sam after he is given the falcon by Captain Jacoby, the captain of the merchant ship La Paloma. Jacoby had been shot and mortally wounded by Wilmer, but nevertheless brought the falcon to Spade’s office before succumbing to his wounds. When Brigid was in the orient, she had given the bird to Jacoby to transport to San Francisco. After handing off the falcon, she took a faster ship to the United States, along with Thursby.

While being held hostage at his apartment by the others, Sam sends Effie to retrieve the falcon from its hiding place and deliver it to him. The falcon turns out to be a fake. While being held at gunpoint, Sam plays psychological games with Wilmer, Gutman, and Cairo, driving a wedge between them by persuading them that one of them has to be given up to the police as a fall guy. They eventually flee to their hotels to make preparations to leave the country. It is later learned that Gutman is killed by Wilmer, presumably for agreeing to give him up as the fall guy. Brigid remains behind and tries to further manipulate Sam by telling him that she loves him, that she knows he is in love with her and suggests that they escape together. Admitting that he is in love with her, he details all of the reasons that he cannot go with her, and that his intent is to turn her over to the police. It is at this point that Sam discloses (to the readers as well as to Brigid) that he has known for some time that Brigid killed Archer. The police arrest Cairo, Wilmer, and Brigid and Sam is cleared. A particularly effective summation is in Chapter 20, entitled, “If they hang you.” In this chapter Sam reconstructs Brigid’s crimes to her in narrative form and explains how he knew these details. He then tells Brigid the eight reasons that he cannot be with her and must turn her over to the police. All of his eight reasons are compelling but especially so are the last three:

The sixth would be that, since I’ve also got something on you, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t shoot a hole in me some day. Seventh, I don’t even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you’d played me for a sucker. And eighth—but that’s enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won’t argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we’ve got what? All we’ve got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you. (p 214)

Another quote in this final chapter which epitomizes, almost in a comical way, the hard-boiled style of this novel and of the genre it helped to create is when Sam tells Brigid;

I’m going to send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means you’ll be out again in twenty years. You’re an angel. I’ll wait for you…if they hang you I’ll always remember you. (p 211)

John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)

This excerpt of Cawelti’s book, consisting of two chapters (six and seven) deals with the hard-boiled detective story that emerged in the writings of Dashiell Hammett and other novelists in the 1920s. Chapter six contrasts the newer, hard-boiled detective story with the classical detective story. Cawelti credits may authors, beginning in the early 1920s, with creating a new formula, different from the classical mystery genre. Most of these writers, including Hammett, had been contributors the serialized pulp magazine Black Mask. Cawelti states that, “Few of the classical detectives have been successfully translated into radio, the movies, or television.” (p 139) The reverse; however, is true for the hard-boiled detective story, as there have been many film adaptations of novels of this style, including Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man. Many of these films earned both critical and artistic accolades as well as box-office success. As Cawelti notes, “the detective heroes of these novels, Sam Spade, Nick Charles, and Philip Marlowe, also figured in successful radio dramas.” (p 139) With the advent of television came the emergence numerous detective programs either based upon or influenced by the protagonists from these earlier, hard-boiled detective stories.

In comparing the two types of story structures, Cawelti states, “Most significantly, the creation of the hard-boiled pattern involved a shift in the underlying archetype of the detective story from a pattern of mystery to that of heroic adventure. Of course, some elements of the mystery archetype remained since the hero was still a detective solving crimes.” (p 142) The pattern of action of both the hard-boiled and the classical detective stories resemble each other in that they each begin with the introduction of the detective and the presentation of the crime. Both types of stories proceed through the investigation, culminating with the solution of the crime and apprehension of the criminal. The author cites two significant differences that appear in the pattern of the hard-boiled detective story: “…the subordination of the drama of solution to the detective’s quest for the discovery and accomplishment of justice and the substitution of a pattern of intimidation and temptation of the hero for the elaborate development in the classical story of what Northrop Frye called ‘the wavering finger of suspicion’ passing across a series of potential suspects.” (p 142) In the classical detective story, the writer attaches less significance to the actual apprehension of the criminal than to the elaborate explanation of the crime. In the hard-boiled pattern, the detective begins his investigation of the crime but then typically discovers that he must make some kind of personal choice or action. The story usually ends with the detective and the criminal confronting each other.

The hard-boiled detective stories are usually set in large cities and the hero’s office is typically located on the fringe or marginal business neighborhood, in a run-down building. The hero is often presented as lower middle class but by choice. His position in life represents a form of rebellion from the world of wealth and power which is fraught with corruption and violence. He is intelligent and uniquely qualified to function within the world of the rich, powerful, and corrupt. This sets the stage for the detective becoming personally involved in the case that he is investigating. “As the pattern of action develops,” Cawelti notes, “the rich, the powerful, and the beautiful attempt to draw the detective into their world and to use him for their own corrupt purposes. He in turn finds that the process of solving the crime involves him in the violence, deceit, and corruption that lie beneath the surface of the respectable world.” (p 145) This is in opposition to the classical detective story where the hero is usually portrayed as a wealthy, brilliant eccentric who solves crimes in a detached and analytical manner –almost as a hobby or to satisfy his own curiosity.

This brings us to a central character that is commonly found in the hard-boiled detective story; that of the female betrayer. “Since Dashiell Hammett first created the pattern in The Maltese Falcon,” Cawelti observes, “one hard-boiled detective after another has found himself romantically or sexually involved with the murderess.” (p 147) This almost always moves the hero to a personal moral and emotional decision: whether or not to destroy the woman he is in love with, who has turned out to be a vicious murderer. Another common element of the hard-boiled detective story is that, “Often the initial victim is a friend of the detective or some other person whose death seems not simply mysterious but regrettable.” (p 147) This was established in The Maltese Falcon, with the initial murder victim being Miles Archer, the partner of protagonist Sam Spade.

Cawelti also discusses the differences in the criminal character in the two detective genres, observing that

the hard-boiled criminal plays a complex and ambiguous role while the classical villain remains an object of pursuit hiding behind a screen of mysterious clues until the detective finally reveals his identity…the hard-boiled criminal is often characterized as particularly vicious, perverse, or depraved, and in a striking number of instances as a woman of unusual sexual attractiveness…A second important characteristic of the hard-boiled culprit is his involvement with the criminal underworld. Rarely is the classical criminal more than a single individual with a rational and specific motive to commit a particular crime. The hard-boiled criminal, on the other hand, usually has some connection with a larger criminal organization. (p 148)

In Chapter Seven, Cawelti examines some of the central differences between the writers that fall within the category of the hard-boiled detective novel. In particular, he contrasts the individual characteristics of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane.