The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Published 1930 · 192 pages · 66,908 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Mystery & Crime

How hard is The Maltese Falcon to read?

The Maltese Falcon scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
The language in 'The Maltese Falcon' is generally accessible, reflecting the hard-boiled genre's directness. While occasional period-specific slang terms like 'gunsel' or 'gooseberry lay' appear, they are infrequent and usually understandable from context. The text avoids archaic words, specialized academic jargon, or invented language, placing it closer to accessible contemporary fiction than to works like 'Moby-Dick' with its specialized terminology.
Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
Dashiell Hammett employs a direct, often declarative sentence structure, particularly in dialogue, which contributes significantly to readability. While some descriptive passages feature longer sentences with multiple clauses, such as the detailed account of Spade rolling a cigarette, these typically describe sequential actions rather than deeply nested or grammatically demanding constructions. The overall rhythm is clear and propulsive, making it more straightforward than 'The Great Gatsby' but more varied than the directness of '1984'.
Abstraction: 45 out of 100
The novel is primarily a concrete, plot-driven narrative focused on crime, investigation, and character interactions, typical of hard-boiled fiction. While the 'Flitcraft story' offers a brief, contained philosophical digression on life's randomness, this is an isolated instance rather than a pervasive engagement with abstract or theoretical concepts. The text largely avoids philosophical debates or metaphysical explorations, keeping the reader firmly grounded in immediate events, similar to 'The Great Gatsby's' social observation through story.
Information density: 55 out of 100
'The Maltese Falcon' maintains a moderate information density, presenting a complex web of characters, motives, and plot twists that require sustained attention. While the narrative is linear, the terse dialogue often carries significant subtext, and detailed descriptions of actions or objects (like the falcon's history) demand focus. However, information is generally revealed progressively and clearly, without the overwhelming conceptual load or fragmented structure found in higher-density works like '2666'.
Narrative indirection: 70 out of 100
Hammett's hard-boiled style demands constant inference, rarely revealing characters' inner thoughts or explicit motivations. Brigid O'Shaughnessy's elaborate and shifting lies, such as her initial 'Miss Wonderly' persona and her evasions about the falcon, force the reader to actively deduce the truth. Sam Spade's laconic dialogue and enigmatic 'blond Satan' grin require readers to interpret his true intentions and moral compass through his actions.
Symbolic density: 75 out of 100
The Maltese Falcon itself serves as a potent symbol of greed and the corrupting power of immense wealth, driving the entire convoluted plot. The philosophical digression of the Flitcraft story functions as an allegory for life's inherent randomness and humanity's attempts to impose order or adapt. Subtle motifs like the recurring 'V' shape in Spade's facial description further hint at his complex, almost devilish, nature.
Ironic distance: 70 out of 100
The narrative maintains a detached, objective tone, presenting morally ambiguous characters and violent events without explicit authorial judgment. Spade's cynical pragmatism and often-amused reactions, such as his 'Success to crime' toast, create a significant gap between the grim realities and the cool narrative presentation. This distance compels the reader to critically evaluate the characters' actions and the underlying moral landscape.
Resolution withholding: 70 out of 100
The plot is a tangled web of deceit, shifting alliances, and multiple murders, with character motivations and the falcon's true history revealed in fragments and often through unreliable testimony. Brigid O'Shaughnessy's constant fabrications and the ongoing mystery surrounding the black bird ensure that definitive answers, particularly regarding moral culpability, remain elusive. The narrative consistently prioritizes the unfolding mystery over clear-cut closure.
Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
The novel primarily employs a linear, third-person limited perspective focused on Sam Spade, maintaining a straightforward chronological progression. While the Flitcraft story is a notable digression, it is explicitly presented as a story told by a character, not a disruptive shift in narrative form. The structure remains conventional, lacking the experimental timelines or multiple viewpoints found in more complex works.

How The Maltese Falcon is regarded

The Maltese Falcon holds a literary regard score of 79 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where The Maltese Falcon sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (127 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The Maltese Falcon scores 80 out of 100. A second mythos, tragedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.2. About the map of stories.

Mode: Ironic
"Well, sir, you might say it belonged to the King of Spain, but I don't see how you can honestly grant anybody else clear title to it—except by right of possession."
Symbol: Literal & Descriptive
Mythos: Irony & Satire vi (irony vi)
"I hope to Christ they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck."
Genre: Novel + Anatomy
"What do you know, sir, about the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, later called the Knights of Rhodes and other things?"

Where the story of The Maltese Falcon takes place

  • San Francisco, 1928 (a few days in December), the main setting
  • Falcon's legend: Rhodes and Malta to Constantinople, 1523-1920s (1523 to 1928)
  • Flitcraft story: Tacoma and Spokane, 1922-1927 (1922 to 1927)

6 things that are true of The Maltese Falcon, with the passage for each

  1. Spade is described as looking like a blond Satan in the book's opening.

    He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.

  2. Brigid first gives her client name as Wonderly and later says her real name is O'Shaughnessy; the Coronet message adds a third, Leblanc.

    "It's really O'Shaughnessy—Brigid O'Shaughnessy."

  3. Cairo offers Spade five thousand dollars for the black bird.

    "I am prepared to pay, on behalf of the figure's rightful owner, the sun of five thousand dollars for its recovery."

  4. Spade tells Brigid the Flitcraft story about a man who vanished after a falling beam nearly hit him.

    A man named Flitcraft had left his real-estate-office, in Tacoma, to go to luncheon one day and had never returned.

  5. Gutman says he spent seventeen years hunting the falcon.

    it took me seventeen years to locate that bird, but I did it.

  6. Spade refuses to let Brigid go and lists reasons, starting with that a partner's killer must not escape.

    When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it.

Scenes in The Maltese Falcon that Frye would name

17 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, XIX. The Russian's Hand
Gutman turned the bird upside-down and scraped an edge of its base with his knife. Black enamel came off in tiny curls The recognition that the falcon is a lead fake pivots the whole story.
Anatomy, XIII. The Emperor's Gift
What do you know, sir, about the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, later called the Knights of Rhodes and other things? Gutman's erudite catalogue of the Knights, Charles V and the falcon is a Menippean set-piece.
Anagnorisis, XX. If They Hang You
He'd've looked you up and down and licked his lips and gone grinning from ear to ear—and then you could've stood as close to him as you liked in the dark Spade reconstructs Archer's murder, recognizing Brigid as the killer.
Pharmakos, XVIII. The Fall-Guy
Spade clinked the pistols together in his hand and smiled cheerfully at Gutman. "Well," he said, "there's our fail-guy." Wilmer is selected as the scapegoat to bear the crimes for the police.
Anatomy, VII. G in the Air
He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works. The Flitcraft parable is an embedded philosophical digression.
Pathos, XV. Every Crackpot
Holding himself stiffly straight, not putting his hands out to break his fall, he fell forward as a tree falls. Captain Jacobi dies delivering the falcon to Spade, the sacrificial scene of the quest.

Books that share these scenes with The Maltese Falcon

About the author

Dashiell Hammett