Welcome to the latest edition of Looks from Books, which aims to prove that you can look smart, while still being book-smart, too. Fashion inspiration can be found between the pages of your favorite stories, on well-designed book covers, and in your favorite characters… if you read closely enough.

This week, we’re taking a closer look at The Maltese Falcon, a prolific mystery thriller novel published in the 1930s, that launched a genre, as well as the iconic name of Samuel Spade, Private Detective.

The Maltese Falcon book cover via Amazon.com

Table of Contents

The remarkable realness present within Hammett’s stories, and the intricate amount of detail applied to every element, is said to be a by-product of Hammett’s own life as a private detective: he worked as a Pinkerton operative from 1915 to 1922. Most of his characters, he claimed, were based off of people he worked for, with, or against.

This element is especially present within The Maltese Falcon, one of the most well-known detective novels of all time, which follows Sam Spade, Private Detective, who is searching for a mysterious artifact being hunted by a beautiful woman named Brigid O’ Shaughnessy, a mysterious foreigner named Joel Cairo, and a pompous collector named Kasper Gutman.

When the search proves to be the end of his partner, finding the falcon and the killer gets all the more personal for Spade. Our hero becomes desperate to get to the artifact first, while also avoiding the interference of ineffective police forces.

A Fashionable Literacy

The Maltese Falcon has been adapted into three movies.

The third movie, made in 1941 — which starred Humphrey Bogart as the hard-boiled detective and Mary Astor as his love interest — is the adaptation most commonly associated with the novel due to its close adherence to the plot. In fact, the movie earned three Oscar nominations (Best Actor, Best Writing, and Best Picture), a high placing on movie lists across the United States, and, in 1989, was inducted into the National Film Registry.