Who Can Sam Spade Trust in The Maltese Falcon?

This essay discusses the setup and keeps the ending under wraps.

The detail I’d watch in the opening of The Maltese Falcon is the money on Sam Spade’s desk. A woman calling herself Miss Wonderly asks Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, to help find her sister. She tells them about a letter, describes the man her sister ran away with and puts two hundred-dollar bills on the desk. After she leaves, Archer is quick to say the bills are genuine. Her story takes longer to check.

That exchange gives you a way into Dashiell Hammett’s novel. What someone can prove and what they can persuade you to believe are two different things. When Archer is killed and Spade is drawn into the search for a jewel-encrusted statuette, the falcon gives everyone a reason to tell a story that will get them something.

The falcon makes trust temporary

The statuette gives people with competing interests a reason to cooperate. Someone may know part of the falcon’s history. Someone else may know where to look. Each has a reason to share just enough to keep the others interested. Reveal too much and the person you’re bargaining with may decide they can get along without you.

That’s where the suspense comes from in scenes that consist mostly of people talking. A character can answer a question honestly and still leave out the one fact that would change how Spade values the offer. The falcon’s promised wealth gives everybody a stake in which version of events he believes.

Sam Spade listens for what people want

Early on, Spade asks Miss Wonderly for concrete details about Floyd Thursby, the man she wants the detectives to follow. She can describe his eyes and tell Spade what he was wearing that morning. When Spade asks what Thursby does for a living, she says she has no idea. The precision of her description makes it easy to forget how much of the larger story depends on taking her word for it.

Spade is just as interesting to watch from the other side of the desk. He can repeat someone’s account back to them, accept a job and keep his judgment to himself. Hammett lets us hear what Spade says and see what he does, leaving us to decide how much of his own performance to believe.

Spade’s code is clearest when it costs him

Archer’s death leaves Spade with obligations that complicate any deal over the falcon. A client can ask for discretion. The police can demand answers. Spade still has to decide what he owes a dead partner and how much personal feeling should count when he makes that decision.

The question I’d keep in mind is whether Spade’s sense of duty makes him trustworthy. A person can stick to a private code while keeping almost everyone around him guessing. Hammett gives that tension room to linger after the immediate mystery is solved.

A spoiler-light way to follow the double-crosses

When two accounts conflict, ask three questions.

1. What did this person see firsthand? Miss Wonderly says she saw Thursby that morning. The story about her sister depends in part on a letter only she describes.
2. What do they want Spade to do? In the opening, she wants one of the two partners to handle the job personally.
3. What changes if he believes them? Once Archer takes the assignment, the story has already shaped what happens next.

Try the same questions when the conversation turns to the falcon. Even before you can tell who’s lying, you can usually see who needs Spade to believe them and what they hope he’ll do about it.

Read more · Our review of The Maltese Falcon and The 20 Best Hardboiled Fiction Books of All Time.

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