The Maltese Falcon (Naxos Complete Classics)

Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, first serialised in a magazine in 1930, is best known through the iconic Humphrey Bogart film of 1941. But it was the book that created the classic 'noir' genre with its tough private detective threading his cool way between the criminals and the law. Sam Spade, the private eye solving the mystery of the Maltese statuette, was the template for Philip Marlowe and a host of others - but they come no more shrewd and cunning with Hammett peppering the text with one-liners. Not even Bogart bettered the original. An idiomatic new recording from Eric Meyers.