Maltese Falcon: Novel vs. Movie

Maltese Falcon: The Novel

The Maltese Falcon contains comparatively little violence (the sixteenth of the twenty chapters is titled “The Third Murder,” in distinct contrast to the excesses of Red Harvest), and most of that occurs “offstage,” reported rather than directly depicted. The emphasis is on Spade's gradual uncovering of the complex relations among the various criminals rather than on simply determining who killed Thursby (the police and the rest of the interested parties draw the obvious conclusion early in the book that Thursby killed Archer), and also on the criminals' and police department's (as well as the reader's) attempts to determine Spade's motives and intentions. Hammett's objective narration limits the reader's knowledge to the same set of lies and half-truths that the characters must sift through themselves to learn the facts of the story (Hammett, 15).

In fact, Archer's death, the initial crime to be solved, is probably dismissed as of little concern by most readers once the story gets under way—until it is revealed at the end that he was really murdered by Brigid O'Shaughnessy, with whom Spade has since apparently fallen in love. In the novel's dramatic conclusion, Spade turns his lover over to the police as Archer's murderer. The reasoning that leads Spade to solve the crime is based upon clues available from the start, suggesting that he may have known of her guilt all along, even before they became lovers. The question remains open as to whether he has really fallen in love but is forced by his rigid personal code of ethics to turn her in or whether he has been cold-bloodedly manipulating her throughout in order to solve the case. The evidence of the text suggests paradoxically that both hypotheses may be partially true (Hammett, 16).

The theme of The Maltese Falcon can ...