The Maltese Falcon

"The Maltese Falcon" is a 1930 published detective novel by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), telling the story of San Francisco based private detective Samuel «Sam» Spade, who gets hired by a beautiful young woman, «Miss Wonderly», to follow a guy named Floyd Thursby. Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer take the job, but later that night, Archer is found shot to death. A few hours later, Thursby is also killed and Spade is a suspect. Sam Spade finds out, that it is all about the title object, a foot-high black statuette of unknown but substantial value.