The Maltese Falcon (novel) The Maltese Falcon (novel) The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine "Black Mask" beginning with the September 1929 issue. The story is told entirely in external third-person narrative; there is no description whatever of any character's internal thoughts or feelings, only what they say and do, and how they look. The novel has been adapted several times for the cinema. The main character, Sam Spade (who also appeared later in some lesser-known short stories), was a departure from Hammett's nameless detective, The Continental Op. Spade combined several features of
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein public, and for unknown reasons decided to attribute authorship to Mary Shelley, thus helping to begin a "hoax" that has persisted up to the present. Lauritsen maintains that revisions to "Frankenstein" made in 1823 and 1831 weakened the work, and that while it was ostensibly Mary Shelley who revised "Frankenstein" into its 1831 form, it may primarily have been revised by the political philosopher William Godwin. Lauritsen argues that handwriting alone cannot be used to determine the actual author of "Frankenstein". The drafts and manuscripts are incomplete and in the final stages. Moreover, portions of the novel were dictated by