On The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon:Â An Archaeology of Ancient Images
By John David Ebert
1.Â
Every noir narrative begins with a corpse, and in the present case, we are confronted with the dead body of one “Miles Archer,” a man whom, we soon discover, was the partner of Sam Spade. Together, the pair ran a private detective agency in San Francisco, and as the narrative opens, they are retained by one Brigid O’Shaugnessy to investigate a man named Thursby. Brigid had come to Spade’s office under the ruse that she was afraid her seventeen year old sister had run off with this Thursby and was anxious that Spade and Archer investigate. By the novel’s conclusion, we learn that Brigid had approached Archer in a dark alley and murdered him with Thursby’s gun, a British-made Webley revolver, in an attempt to frame Thursby for the murder. It turns out that she had wanted Thursby, who had been her business partner, out of the way, for both she and Thursby had been hired by a man named Gutman to obtain a golden falcon made by the Knights of Malta and given to Charles V of Spain as a gift during the seventeenth century. The falcon had made its way to Constantinople, where Brigid and Thursby had obtained it and then, instead of giving it to Gutman, had fled with it to Hong Kong, from whence, as the novel opens, it is on its way, by boat, to San Francisco.
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