The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett created a style that has become the template of its genre to an extent hardly matched by any other writer. It is Sam Spade who comes to mind when imagining a private detective, with his dry, darkly witty and unsentimental rejoinders in conversation (such as his response when a beautiful woman offers him her body: ‘I’ll think it over’); and a world of greedy, unscrupulous crooks, matched by a tenebrous urban atmosphere, is part of the code, too. Hammett did not create all these elements, but he took what could easily have become merely pulp-fiction conventions and made them into novels – and one novel in particular: The Maltese Falcon. Among the reasons why he could give these conventions depth and convincing morality was that he knew what he wastalking about. Hammett had actually worked as a private detective, had seen large-scale corruption at first hand, understood hard drinking, womanising and extra-marital affairs; but he was also faithful and principled. The world he created is believable because it was real.