Simplified Titles: 1. The Maltese Falcon 2. The Thin Man 3. Red Harvest

The three classic novels published here in one volume are rich with the crisp prose, subtle characters, and intricate plots that made Dashiell Hammett one of the most admired writers of the twentieth century. A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel. Hammett's prose was clean and entirely unique, and his characters were as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction, according to The New York Times.

In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade, a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, tangles with a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. The Thin Man introduces Hammett's wittiest creations, Nick and Nora Charles, who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. And in Red Harvest, Hammett's anonymous tough-guy detective, the Continental Op, takes on the entire town of Poisonville in a deadly war against corruption.

Dashiell Hammett is widely regarded as a master of the detective novel. Raymond Chandler praised him for writing "scenes that seemed never to have been written before," while Ross Macdonald called him "unsurpassed in his own or any time" as a novelist of realistic intrigue. André Gide compared Hammett's dialogues only to the best in Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein considered him "one of the best contemporary American writers."

As the Boston Globe put it, "Dashiell Hammett is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." His spare, hard-boiled style and sharply defined characters have left an indelible mark on the genre and on American literature as a whole.

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