置身殘酷大街上，沒有僥倖的可能；
唯有武裝起自己的拳頭與口舌，哪怕人家說他冷酷、貪婪、現實，也毫不在乎。

「硬漢，你的名字叫山姆！」

入選二十世紀百大英文小說
美國推理作家協會票選百大推理小說第二名

　　馬爾他之鷹，十六世紀羅德武士獻給西班牙國王的貢品。金碧輝煌、價值連城，各方人馬莫不挖空心思、捨命追逐，由阿爾及耳、西西里、巴黎、君士坦丁堡，一路來到美國舊金山。私家偵探山姆．史貝德的合夥人因為「它」送掉性命，逼得他不得不捲入這場歷時三百年、跋涉三千里的稀世珍寶爭奪戰中。

　　私家偵探不再像福爾摩斯般高貴，他們必須武裝起自己的體魄及言語，衝撞每一個犯罪之都甚至自我內心的黑暗面。
A coolly glittering gem of detective fiction that has haunted three generations of readers, from one of the greatest mystery writers of all time.
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name 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 iconic, influential, and beloved The Maltese Falcon.
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作者簡介

達許．漢密特（Dashiell Hammett）

　　一八九四年五月二十七日生於美國馬里蘭州，在巴爾的摩與費城長大。十三歲失學，出外賺錢貼補家用，二十一歲受雇於平克頓偵探社巴爾的摩分社。一九四二年二次世界大戰爆發，以四十八歲之齡志願從軍三年。

　　一九二二年，漢密特以彼得．柯林森的筆名首次在《黑面具》雜誌上發表創作，與雷蒙．錢德勒開啟了美國本土冷硬派私探小說的先河。豐富的人生閱歷提供他無數的題材，畢生共寫了八十多部短篇小說、劇本，其中長篇小說《馬爾他之鷹》、《瘦子》、《玻璃鑰匙》都曾被拍成電影。

　　漢密特於一九六一年一月十日因肺癌過世，享壽六十七歲。
Dashiell Samuel Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. 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.
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