In this week’s episode, we are joined by the crime novelist Mark Billingham to discuss his favourite book, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. First serialised in Black Mask magazine in 1929 and published the following year in book form by Alfred A. Knopf, it is widely considered to have inaugurated the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction. It introduces the tough, abrasive and morally ambiguous private detective, Sam Spade, who sent Dorothy Parker ‘mooning about in a daze of love such as I had not known for any character in literature since I encountered Sir Lancelot.’

The labyrinthine plot turns around the eponymous falcon of the title – a statuette so valuable that three people are killed in the search to retrieve it. But, as the discussion reveals, it is not the plot that has made the book a classic. Hammett’s San Francisco, filled with sharp-tongued dames, wise-cracking gumshoes, cops on the take and thugs on the lam, spawned a whole genre of noir novels and movies – including John Huston’s classic adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in 1941. In 1995, the Mystery Writers of America voted The Maltese Falcon the third greatest crime novel of all time. In this episode, illuminated by Mark’s own long experience of writing in the genre, we try to find out why.

And as a bonus, as Mark Billingham is also a huge Elvis Costello fan, Andy obliges with a Maltese Falcon / EC themed quiz.

Books mentioned
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon; The Continental Op; The Thin Man; Red Harvest; The Glass Key; The Dain Curse
Mark Billingham - The Last Dance; Rabbit Hole; Sleepy Head; Cry Baby
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep & Other Novels; Farewell, My Lovely
James M. Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice
Jim Thompson - The Killer Inside Me
Ross Macdonald - The Drowning Pool

Other links
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
Mark Billingham website
Mystery Writers of America 100 Greatest Crime Novels of All Time
Dashiell Hammett: A Documentary (Josh Waletsky, 1999)
Dashiell Hammett’s 1934 Introduction to The Maltese Falcon
Lillian Hellman on The Dick Cavett Show (1973)
The Mystery of Dashiell Hammett - Claudia Roth Pierpont (New Yorker, 2002)
Dashiell Hammett’s Strange Career - Anne Diebel (Paris Review, 2018)
Politics and the 1920s Writings of Dashiell Hammett - J.A. Zumoff (American Studies, 2012)