ANNOTATIONSam Spade, a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, stars in Hammett's cooly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted 2 generations of readers.FROM THE PUBLISHERA treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.FROM THE CRITICSNew York Times Book ReviewIf the locution 'hard-boiled' had not already been coined it would be necessary to coin it now to describe the characters of Dashiell Hammett's latest detective story. . . there is plenty of excitement.– Books of the Century; New York Times review, February 1930