Oh yeah, in addition to weird propaganda, I also finished reading The Maltese Falcon, which is a nice read if you have 2-3 spare hours; it's short and quick. If you've seen the movie, don't go out of your way to read the book--all the characters in the movie are so vivid that they overwhelm the sparse print descriptions of them, and the story is almost exactly the same. If you haven't seen the movie, then go read the book or see the movie. The book is fine, but the film is the real classic. I haven't read anything else by Hammett, but based on this book I prefer Raymond Chandler or James Cain for my hard-boiled fiction.