Dashiell Hammett THE MALTESE FALCON Folio Society
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Dashiell Hammett THE MALTESE FALCON Folio Society
Folio edition, first print slipcased hardback of THE MALTESE FALCON, by Dashiell Hammett and Published by the Folio Society, London, in 2000. Introduced by Steve Erickson. Illustrated by David Eccles.
The book is in near fine condition (Bound in buckram. Large black falcon illustration on boards and yellow lettering on spine). In its original illustrated slipcase which is in very good condition with just light rubbing to the edges and bumping to the corners. Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no inscriptions.
Dashiell Samuel Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs thereafter—messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, operator, and stevedore, finally becoming an operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. Sleuthing suited young Hammett, but World War I intervened, interrupting his work and injuring his health. When Sergeant Hammett was discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work. He soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920s Hammett became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. In The Maltese Falcon (1930) he first introduced his famous private eye, Sam Spade. The Thin Man (1932) offered another immortal sleuth, Nick Charles. Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most successful novels.
During World War II, Hammett again served as sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians. Hammett’s later life was marked in part by ill health, alcoholism, a period of imprisonment related to his alleged membership in the Communist Party, and by his long-time companion, the author Lillian Hellman, with whom he had a very volatile relationship. His attempt at autobiographical fiction survives in the story “Tulip,” which is contained in the posthumous collection The Big Knockover (1966, edited by Lillian Hellman). Another volume of his stories, The Continental Op (1974, edited by Stephen Marcus), introduced the final Hammett character: the “Op,” a nameless detective (or “operative”) who displays little of his personality, making him a classic tough guy in the hard-boiled mold—a bit like Hammett himself..
"Miss Wonderly has dark red hair, a slender body and plenty of hundred dollar bills. Wise-cracking San Francisco private eye Sam Spade is not too concerned about whether the story she tells, about her sister running away with a man called Floyd Thursby, is true. But, when Spade’s partner is gunned down on the trail of Thursby, he realises that the beautiful Miss Wonderly is not what she appears. It seems she holds the key to the whereabouts of a priceless jewel-encrusted falcon, believed to have belonged to the Knights Templar, and she changes her loyalties at the drop of a dime.
Dashiell Hammett worked for a detective agency for 7 years before he quit, due to a combination of ill health and political differences with the police force. With The Maltese Falcon, first published in 1930, he dragged the detective novel into the 20th century. Sam Spade was the original hard-boiled detective: quick-thinking, sharp-talking, with a weakness for a pretty dame. This edition contains illustrations by David Eccles in the style of a graphic novel. In a fine new introduction Steve Erickson, film critic of the LA Times, reveals how little director John Huston changed the novel for the celebrated 1941 adaptation, and how much the novel has influenced thrillers afterwards, both on screen and on the page."
'Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it in the alley' — Raymond Chandler
Book size: 8¾" × 5½". 240 pages with 10 black-and-white illustrations.
ISBN: n/a
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Dashiell Hammett THE MALTESE FALCON Folio Society