MYSTERY:  A treasure worth killing for--Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn 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.


Like John Ford's celebrated film adaptation, this dramatization by the award-winning Hollywood Theater of the Ear remains faithful to the original; unlike the film, this version is unfettered by a censor’s pressure to mute the tough realism of Hammett’s vision.