The Maltese Falcon - by Dashiell Hammett

I found this book rather hard work. It is very much of its time, having been written nearly a century ago. The behaviour of the characters seems very odd by today's standards. The story is reasonably coherent, but there does not seem to be very much to it. It is very much in the old-fashioned detective story style, where everything is explained at the end instead of the reader having the opportunity to glean understanding as they go along. It seemed to me that several opportunities were missed. Some more discussion of why the bird was considered so valuable would have been good. At the end of the story, there were several opportunities for nice twists [like the appearance of a non-fake falcon], but these were missed.