“Hammett’s prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.” —New York Times
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- The Maltese Falcon
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Read by Robertson Dean
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Release Date: 10/15/19
Formats: Digital Audy
The definitive masterpiece of the hard-boiled detective genre, The Maltese Falcon first appeared in the pages of Black Mask magazine in 1929 and was almost immediately acknowledged as not only a great crime novel but an enduring masterpiece of American fiction.
Tough, cynical PI Sam Spade—a man who, as his creator explained, is “able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with”—is hired by the story’s irresistible femme fatale, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, to locate the client’s sister by tailing her companion. Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, takes on the assignment, and quickly both he and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner’s death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters—all of them after a legendary statuette of a falcon fashioned long ago for King Charles V of Spain.
Made of gold and encrusted with jewels, the falcon is worth a fortune. Missing for centuries, it resurfaced in Paris in 1911, covered in black enamel to disguise its value, and then disappeared again until it was traced to Constantinople—and now, it would seem, to Spade’s own backyard.
- The Maltese Falcon
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Read by Robertson Dean
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Release Date: 10/15/19
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Glass Key
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Read by Stephen R. Thorne
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Release Date: 12/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett's tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.
A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel.
- The Glass Key
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Read by Stephen R. Thorne
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Release Date: 12/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Dain Curse
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Read by Richard Ferrone
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
The Continental Op is a short, squat, and utterly unsentimental tank of a private detective. Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young, wealthy, and a devotee of morphine and religious cults. She has an unfortunate effect on the people around her: they have a habit of dying violently. Is Gabrielle the victim of a family curse? Or is the truth about her weirder and infinitely more dangerous? The Dain Curse is one of the Continental Op's most bizarre cases and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.
- The Dain Curse
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Read by Richard Ferrone
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Red Harvest
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Read by Richard Ferrone
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Release Date: 7/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
Detective-story master Dashiell Hammett gives us yet another unforgettable read in Red Harvest.
When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty—even if that meant taking on an entire town.
Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
- Red Harvest
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Read by Richard Ferrone
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Release Date: 7/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Thin Man
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Read by William Dufris
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Release Date: 11/11/08
Formats: Digital Audy
The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New York’s coolest crime-solving couple.
Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later, a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick’s client.
Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities and cold-blooded murder.
- The Thin Man
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Read by William Dufris
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Release Date: 11/11/08
Formats: Digital Audy