The Maltese Falcon

A treasure worth killing for.  Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics.  A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime.  These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.