Three Novels by Dashiell Hammett

Red Harvest

A private detective sets out to solve a murder mystery, then tries to clean up a corrupt town. Large body count by the end, none of them killed by the protagonist.

The Maltese Falcon

With a couple of very minor exceptions, the movie version with Bogart is the same as the book. By modern standards, the movie is exactly the same as the book. If some unprincipled hack like Peter Jackson were to do a remake, the movie would be nothing like the book.

Gutman's daughter has a very minor, but interesting, role in the book. Her character was not in the movie.

At the end, Wilmer kills Gutman, which is not in the movie.

The Thin Man

I never saw the movie, but I am defintely interested in seeing it now that I have read the book. Nick and Nora Charles are very interesting characters. They are always either drunk, getting drunk, or hungover. The lives of the idle and rich require prodigious amounts of alchohol, I guess. They eat interesting foods, like kippers and raw beef with onions.