---
author: Dashiell Hammett
pdate: 1930
rdate: 2022
rating: 7
genre: Detective fiction
---

#english_literature #books #classicbooks #fiction
## Detailed summary

A San Fransisco-based detective, Samuel Spade, is introduced by his assistant Effie Perine to his new customer: Miss Wonderly, a 22-year old woman from New York whose sister Corianne had run away to San Fransisco with a man named Floyd Thursby. She's anxious for her 17 year old sister, who doesn't reply to her letters, and has arranged a date with Floyd in the evening to discuss Corianne. Samuel suggests that Floyd may have put Corianne in the pudding club. She is intrerrupted by Miles Archer, Sam's partner, who makes a rather inappropriate "whistle of appreciation" about her. The partners assure Wonderly that they'll deal with the problem by spying on Floyd during his date with Wonderly and after it.

In the middle of the night, Samuel is awaken by a phone call by someone telling him that a person has died. Annoyed, Samuel goes to the crime scene and finds that his partner, Miles, has been shot. Refusing a police detective, Tom Polhaus,'s suggestion to at least look at his dead body in order to tell Miles' wife, Iva, about his death, Samuel looks kinda sus. He then goes home and drinks until Toni Dundy, a police lieutenant, and Tom visit him. They ask him whether he's broken the news to Iva, and he lies that he did (in reality, he told Effie to do so). Then they try to ask if he has any guns or so on. They then tell him that he's kinda sus because Thursby was shot 30 minutes after Spade left the crime scene. They then reason with each other and the police detectives leave.

During Wonderly's visit to Spade, it is revelaed they had an affair. Wonderly says to him that Spade may have killed Archer out of jealousy, which is a notion that Spade rejects. Later, Effie Perine suggests that Wonderly might have killed Archer to marry Spade. Then Spade goes to a hotel where Wonderly lived only to find out that she had moved into another one.

Spade visited the hotel where Wonderly lived and realised that the whole story she had told him is a lie. Her real name is Brigid O'Shaughnessy. She continues her narrative that she is grave danger and was almost coerced by Spade into giving him some money. He promises to find some help. Then he goes back to his office and asks Effie what she thinks of O'Shaughnessy. She replies that she trusts her. Spade then proceeds into another detective's office, Sid Wise's, and convinces him to enter this mystery. Soon, a man named Joel Cairo entered his office, offering Sam 5 grands for the retrieval of a black statuette of a bird. Then, after Effie went outside, Joel pulled a pistol and ordered Spade to clasp his hands at the back of his neck.

Spade searches Cairo's pockets and waits until he comes round. After he does so, Spade is suprised by the fact that Cairo's offer was not fictive, and he is still willing to pay 5 thousand dollars for the recovery of the statuette. He mentions that though the conditions of ownership of the bird are questionable, his boss' ones are the most sensible, and that only he has the right to own the statuette, and certainly not Thursby. This implies that Thursby had stolen the statuette before his death. Spade agrees to the offer.

Spade arrives at Brigid's hotel room and tells her about Cairo and the statuette. Frightened, she accuses him of betrayal, but Sam responds that she didn't tell him about "any black birds". Trying to beat the $5000 price set by Cairo, Brigid tries to pay with her body, but Spade refuses. Brigid tells him, that she needs to speak to Cairo first. To maintain secrecy, they go to Spade's apartment. 

While Spade and Brigid are waiting for Cairo to arrive, Spade tells her the story of a man named Flitcraft who had once disappeared and started a new life in another city. Flitcraft said that he had almost died to a falling steel beam, and this made him realise the hecticness of life. But as soon as he settled down, he forgor about it. This illustrated how death is out of people's control and can strike at any moment, and that in the face of such knowledge that the rest of life is essentially meaningless. Cairo then arrives, they have a convo, but then, when the topic of the boy who has been tailing Spade is mentioned, Cairo offends O'Shaughnessy by comparing this boy to the her girlfriend she had in Constantinople. They exchange slaps, and Spade intervenes by choking and slapping Cairo. Suddenly, the police arrive. Its Dundy and Polhaus. They want to come in, but Spade refuses. Dundy mentions the rumors about him and Iva. They were about to leave but then Cairo's cry for help interrupts them, and they come in.

The puzzled officers came in to investigate, but soon realised that it was all a joke that had been planned by Spade. The officers know that Spade is up to something, but can't prove it. Angered by this, Dundy punches Sam, and Sam was about to hit back, but Tom intervened and they all left.

Once Joel and the cops left, Spade interrogates Brigid. It is discovered that she was actually threatening Cairo to keep him quiet, but frightened him too much. She tells him that she was supposed to rob a Russian General Kemidov in Constantinople. Originally, Cairo offered to pay 500 pounds for it, but Thursby offered some 700 pounds. However, she soon realised that Thursby wasn't gonna give her share. That's why she asked Archer to tail him so that they could steal it back and negotiate terms with Floyd. Sam calls bullshit on the story, but Brigid seduces him and they fuck at the end of the chapter.

When Samuel woke up, he went to Brigid's place and searched it for the bird. Afterwards, he went back home and futilely tried to interrogate her. He then proceeded to Hotel Belvedere, where the same boy who had been tailing him before was. He asked if Joel was in, and upon receiving a negative answer, enlisted the help of his acquantance, the hotel-detective Luke, to get the kid to leave. Literally cursing ("Fuck you!"), the defeated kid leaves. Just as Sam had asked Luke to keep an eye on Joel, Joel himself arrived, and said that he was under interrogation by the police. Sam left to his office, where he learned from Effie that Tom Polhaus and Iva had been been trying to reach him. Besides, Brigid was also there, worried about that someone had been in her room (Spade moment). Then, Spade asks Effie to shelter Brigid at her home for a while. He also learned that the Mr. G. Brigid had mentioned had asked Effie to make Spade call back.

Iva Archer confessed to Spade that she informed the police of him because Miles' brother, Phil Archer, suspected Samuel. Spade is not angry and advises her to meet his lawyer, Sid Wise. After her leaving, Mr. G called Spade and revealed himself to be named Casper Gutman, Esquire, and asked Spade to come over to Alexandria Hotel. There, he was introduced to Casper by the same boy whom he had forced to leave Belvedere Hotel. Casper, morbidly obese, gave Spade some whiskey and they started talking. Spade tells Casper that he's either going to tell him what's the deal with the bird by 5:30 that day or he's not getting the bird. Angered, Samuel throws a glass at the table, smashing it, and announces his ultimatum once again, then leaves.

Samuel enquiered Sid about the contents of his conversation with Iva Archer, to which the latter told Sammy that Iva was following Miles in the night of his death because he had told her he had been dating a girl and that might her chance for a divorce, but soon Iva realised that he was actually on his job, following Floyd and Brigid. Mad, she kinda roamed around the city for a while, and then went home.
When Samuel arrived at his office, Effie asked him where Brigid was, because she hadn't got to Effie's mother's apartment when she had to. To figure things out, Sam went to a taxicab stand and interrogated a driver who told him that Brigid paid the driver to take her to the Ferry Building, where she left.
On Spade's way to his office he was stopped by Gutman's boy, so they went to Casper's office. Before entering it, however, Spade skillfully disarmed the boy of 2 automatic pistols the latter had in his pockets.

In Casper's office, the fat man told Samuel that the bird - the falcon statuette - was supposed to have been a gift from the Hospitaliers to Charles V, the king of Spain at the time, but was intercepted by pirates, then went to Algiers, then, after a couple centuries later, was discovered by a Greek man named Charilaos Konstantinides, who told the story to Gutman himself. However, some time after Charilaos was murdered, and Gutman found the statuette 17 years later in possession of a Russian general Kemidov, who didn't know about the falcon's value. He sent "agents" to extract the falcon, but these agents took the falcon for themselves. He offers Samuel two options: 1) he pays him 50 grand in total; 2) he pays him a quarter of the falcon's price. Pondering about the options, Samuel discovers that he had been drugged, and soon collapsed on the floor. Also, the boy's first name is Wilmer Cook.

The next morning, Spade gets back to his office with a swollen temple, much to the suprise of Effie. He believes he was drugged because Gutman had decided to look for the falcon himself. Sam asks Effie whether she can ask her cousin, a history professor, if the the falcon story has any truth to it. Spade next heads to Belvedere where he meets up with Luke, and together they search Cairo's room. There, Samuel notices a newspaper with a section about ship arrivals ripped out. One of the ships was named *La Paloma*, and was heading from Hong Kong, where Brigid had met Thursby. He realised that's why she had gone to the Ferry Building to meet the ship. Back at his office, he makes arrangements with District Attorney Bryan, and Tom Polhaus. When Effie comes back, she says her cousing verified the information about the falcon. Spade notices some black soot on her, and she mentions that she passed the harbor where the *La Paloma* was on fire.

Spade and Polhaus meet for a lunch at a diner. Polhaus apologises for Dundy punching him and informs Spade that they have substantial evidence linking Thursby with Archer's murder. Polhaus tells Spade that Thursby had a long history working as a gunman and bodyguard in the mob. Most recently, he worked for Dixie Monahan, a mobster who was in deep gambling debts to other mobsters. Then Spade meets Bryan at his office. Bryan asks Spade for his opinion on who killed Thursby as well as why Archer was following him. Spade refuses to do so because of his client's confidentiality. Bryan tries to convince Spade that his client was working for Dixie Monahan's debt-holders, so that by following Thursby they'd find Dixie, but Spade ridicules Bryan's theory as completely ungrounded, telling him that the only way he'll catch the murderer is if the police stay out of the case and let Spade do his work. After calling every person on the government payroll a crackpot, he storms out.

At the office, Effie strokes Spade's head as he tells her that Brigid may have been around the *La Paloma* when it caught fire. Effie accuses him of ignoring a client in danger just because she withheld information and did something without his consent or knowledge. She urges him to go investigate and he does. When he returns an hour and a half later in high spirits, Effie tells him that Luke called about Cairo. Spade says he'll tell her everything about Cairo after he's done with Cairo. When he arrived at the Belvedere, Cairo had already left. Spade returns to the office and tells Effie that during the hour he was gone, he interview crewmen from the *La Paloma*, and was able to piece together that Brigid, Gutman, Cairo, Wilmer, and Captain Jacobi of the *La Paloma* had all met onboard the ship the previous night. As he is in the middle of explaining the fire, a tall man with a package barges into the office, muttering the words "You know-", collapses and dies. Spade openes the package and realises it is the falcon. Effie then gets a call from Brigid claiming to be Gutman's hotel and in danger, and urges Sam to go help her. Samuel repackages the falcon, tells Effie to call the police but don't tell them anything about the bird, calls her "a good damn man, sister" and rushes out.

Spade hides the falcon in a locker at the bus depot, then takes the locker key and mails it express to his apartment. He then heads to Gutman's hotel room, where Rhea Gutman lets him in. Spade helps her walk back inside, realising that Gutman must have drugged her. Rhea has been keeping herself awake by making cuts in her belly with a metal pin. In garbled half-phrases she manages to say that Gutman, Cairo, and Wilmer have taken Brigid to an address in Burlingame, a town 20 miles from San Francisco, with plans to kill her. Spade leads Rhea to the bed, calls the hotel manager to come look after her, and then calls himself a taxi to take him to Brigid's location.
The address turns out to be a house in the suburbs with a for-sale sign stuck in the yard. Spade contacts the owner and realises he's been tricked since no one has been to the house in weeks.
Spade returns home and, as he puts his key into the door, Brigid rushes towards him, and explains she's been hiding in wait until he came home. When they enter his apartment, the light suddenly turns on and Gutman along with Wilmer and Cairo, each holding guns, are waiting for them.

Spade and Brigid enter the room and sit on the couch across from Gutman. Cairo and Wilmer lower their weapons and stand beside the couch. Gutman admits to the hoax of having his daughter trick Spade into looking for Brigid while they tried to find Captain Jacobi. In response, Spade offers to give the falcon to Gutman for the agreed upon $50,000 dollars, but Gutman instead produces an envelop with only ten one-thousand dollar bills in it. Gutman says this is the highest amount of money he is willing to pay. Without explaining that the key to the locker where he stashed the falcon will arrive in the morning mail, Spade tells them he cannot get the bird till morning.

Spade says the money doesn't matter until they find a fall-guy on whom to pin the murders in order to get the police off their trail. Spade suggests they frame Wilmer. Gutman politely refuses Spade's suggestion, saying that Wilmer is like a son to him. Spade explains that Bryan doesn't care if the police catch the actual killer since he only cares about his reputation. After talking for a while, Wilmer is unable to listen to Spade's plan any longer, and threatens to shoot him, but Gutman and Cairo prevent him from doing so. Spade knocks Wilmer unconscious, and threatens to turn them all in to the police unless Gutman agress to frame Wilmer. He acquiesces.

They wait until Spade calls Effie to get the key and get him the falcon. Gutman scratches some of the black paint underneath the falcon, and realises it is a decoy made out of lead, not gold. In the confusion that followed, Wilmer slips out of the apartment. Gutman realises that Kemidov must have discovered the true worth of the statue, and decides to return to Constantinople in order to locate the real one. Gutman reveals a golden gun, and asks Spade for the envelope with the cash. He returns it, but first takes one of the bills as a bribe for not calling the police. Gutman encourages to join the expedition to Constantinople, and leaves the apartment with Cairo.

As soon as they leave, Spade calls Polhaus and turns them in. He then presses Brigid to tell him all the truth, and she does:
1) They teamed up with Cairo in Constantinople, but after doubting his loyalty to their cause of stealing the falcon from Gutman, she employed Thursby and they escaped to Hong Kong
2) Brigid wanted to get Thursby out of the way, so she could keep the profits from the statue for herself. 
Spade reasons that Thursby couldn't have killed Archer since the latter would have been drawn into the secluded alley only be someone he trusted, so he accues Brigid of killing Archer by seducing him into the alley and then shooting him with Thursby's gun, hoping that the police would arrest Thursby for the crime. But after hearing Thursby was shot, she knew Gutman was in town, so she turned to Spade to protect her. In the end, Spade turned her in as well. The cops arrived, and tell him that Gutman had been shot by Wilmer. The next morning at the office, [Effie](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters) asks if the papers were right in reporting that he turned in [Brigid](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters/brigid-o-shaughnessy). [Spade](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters/sam-spade) confirms the story and she looks at him with contempt, saying that he did the right thing but that she’s still disgusted that he would turn on some who loved him. At her rejection, Spade turns pale and goes to his desk. As he sits down, there is a knock at the door. Effie comes into his private office and says [Iva](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters) wants to speak with him. With some reluctance, Spade tells Effie to let her in.

Effie’s reaction reveals that sometime justice and loyalty cannot always coexist. Spade cannot do right by a woman who loved him and do right by his dead partner. Since Effie has been a source of morality, her disapproval makes Spade rethink his decision, makes him face the fact that he turned down the chance at love, for a woman who seemed his equal, for justice. And in the last moment Spade is faced with a further result of his choice: having given up on a chance at love with a woman who was his equal; having betrayed a chance at love in favor of justice; Spade must now confront Iva’s attempts to rope him into a more domestic arrangement with a woman he definitely does not love. Will Spade, after seeing the possibility of love and facing death, follow in Flitcraft’s footsteps and fall into a kind of blind domesticity?

## Short Summary
In San Francisco during the late 1920s, the beautiful Miss Wonderly arrives at [Samuel Spade](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters/sam-spade) and Miles Archer’s detective agency. She asks the detectives to follow a man named [Floyd Thursby](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters), who she claims has run off with her younger sister [Corinne](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters). Eager to get closer with Wonderly, Archer agrees to do the job while Spade, suspicious of the woman, mocks his partner’s rashness.
That evening, Spade awakes to a phone call telling him that his partner has been killed. When he arrives at the crime scene, Spade talks with the police officer [Tom Polhaus](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters) about the possibility that Thursby killed Archer. An hour after Spade returns to his apartment, Polhaus and [Lieutenant Dundy](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters), an arrogant and brash cop, show up at his door with questions about the murder. The cops reveal that Thursby has also been killed, thirty minutes after Spade left the site of Archer’s murder, and its clear they think it is possible that Spade killed Thursby in revenge.
At his office the following day, Spade and Archer’s wife, [Iva Archer](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters), discuss the secret affair they’ve been having behind Archer’s back. After she leaves, Spade goes to meet Wonderly at her hotel, where he discovers her real name is [Brigid O’Shaughnessy](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters/brigid-o-shaughnessy), she has no sister, and that Thursby was a dangerous man she met in Hong Kong. Although she provides no further details, Spade agrees to continue working for her.
Back at his office, Spade meets [Joel Cairo](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters/joel-joe-cairo) who offers him $5,000 if he can retrieve a statue of a [falcon](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/symbols/the-maltese-falcon). Later, Spade and Brigid meet again, and Spade mentions his run in with Cairo and his acceptance of the offer. Brigid, who appears to know Cairo, asks if Spade could arrange a meeting so she can talk with Cairo. At the meeting, Cairo offers to pay Brigid for the bird, but she claims she doesn’t have it in her possession yet. They also refer to Mr. G as the man who had Thursby killed. After the meeting, Spade asks Brigid about her relationship to Cairo and the falcon, but she sidetracks the conversation by seducing him. That night they sleep together.
The next day, Spade arrives at Cairo’s hotel and has a verbal confrontation with a young man named [Wilmer Cook](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters) who works for Mr. G. When Spade returns to his office, Mr. G, now identified as [Casper Gutman](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters/casper-gutman), calls to set up a meeting. At the meeting, Gutman reveals the bird’s long history and its priceless value. Gutman tells Spade that he employed Brigid to steal it from a Russian general [Kemidov](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters) in Constantinople. Gutman says she betrayed him and is hiding the bird somewhere in San Francisco. At this point, Spade realizes the drink that Gutman gave him is drugged and he falls to the floor unconscious.
Twelve hours later, Spade wakes and searches Cairo’s hotel room for more clues, discovering that the statue of the bird was on a ship called La Paloma that had arrived in San Francisco while he was unconscious. A few minutes after Spade returns to his office, [Captain Jacobi](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters) of La Paloma bursts through the door, hands Spade a package, and then collapses and dies. Wrapped inside the package is the black bird. After hiding the bird, Spade returns home, where Brigid is waiting for him at his doorstep. They enter the apartment together and find Cairo, Wilmer, and Gutman waiting for them.
After Gutman pays Spade $10,000 for the bird, Spade calls his secretary, [Effie Perine](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/characters), to have her drop the bird off at his apartment. As they wait, Spade convinces Gutman to betray Wilmer and make him the “fall-guy” for all the murders so that the police will stop investigating. Effie arrives with the bird and Gutman quickly realizes that it’s a fake and that Kemidov is in possession of the real statue. In the confusion, Wilmer flees the apartment. After Gutman pulls out a [gun](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-maltese-falcon/symbols/guns) and demands that Spade return the $10,000, Spade gives him the money but first takes one thousand dollar bill as a bribe for not calling the police. Determined to steal the bird from Kemidov, Gutman and Cairo leave the apartment with plans to return to Constantinople.
Spade calls Polhaus and tells him that Wilmer killed Jacobi and Thursby at Gutman’s orders. With the police arriving soon, Spade convinces Brigid to tell him the whole truth. She admits to killing Archer in order to frame Thursby for the murder so that she could keep the profits from selling the bird for herself. Although she pleads for mercy and tells Spade she loves him, Spade turns her over to the police when they arrive because he wants justice for his dead partner. Spade gives the police the thousand dollars as evidence of Gutman trying to bribe him, but the police inform Spade that Wilmer has already killed Gutman in revenge for agreeing to betray him.
The next morning at the office, Effie cannot face Spade after he let the police arrest the woman who loved him. As he settles in at his desk, Iva Archer arrives and Spade reluctantly lets her in.

## Trivia
One of the scientists at the [[Manhattan Project]] named the bomb "The Fat Man" after Casper's nickname in the 1941 movie adaptation of the book.

## Themes
### Greed
Greed is one of the main motivators for a lot of characters.
### Betrayal, lies, and deception
No comment. It's just everywhere in the book.
Also, the Flitcraft Parable Spade tells Brigid, he too believes she, just like Flitcraft, in the end won't change.
### Authority, justice, code of ethics
### Fate and death
### Love