The Maltese Falcon

The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your reading of this outstanding selection from the 'hard-boiled' school of crime writing: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. We hope that it will provide you with new ways of looking at--and talking about--the nature of detective fiction, as well as give you insight into how the hard-boiled style of writing emerged in the genre; how the style was shaped by twentieth-century American culture and by the lives of the men who created it; and how this form of writing has subsequently affected the way we view ourselves as Americans.