The eagerness with which Brigid O'Shaughnessy welcomed Spade suggested that she had been not entirely sure of his coming. She had put on a satin gown of the blue shade called Artoise that season, with chalcedony shoulder-straps, and her stockings and slippers were Artoise.

The red and cream sitting-room had been brought to order and livened with flowers in squat pottery vases of black and silver. Three rough-barked logs burned in the fireplace. Spade watched them burn while she put away his hat and coat.

An example of the slang used can be found on page 76, line 5, of the final paragraph:

...supposed to have on him when he was bumped off. It looked funny...

It can be argued that the use of slang and excessive detail are detrimental to the story, but such arguments are made by the narrow-minded. "The Maltese Falcon" is outstanding in its genre, though would be found bo

Spade put the Call down on the desk and looked into the wastebasket again. He found a small piece of wrapping-paper, a piece of string, two hosiery tags, a haberdasher's sale-ticket for half a dozen pairs of socks, and, in the bottom of the basket, a piece of newspaper rolled in a tiny ball.

The tear passed through the next line, leaving only enough of its letters to make from Sydney inferable.

As can been seen from the example, Hammett used much punctuation in just the right places to keep the detail in the story from boring the reader. Also, the amount of detail is evident here as well - see the description of the contents of the wastebasket. Many other writers in this situation would not have bothered to identify the actual items in the trashcan, but rather would have balled them all into one lump description, vague enough to show how unimportant it was. However, Hammett seems to have felt the need to explicate exactly what was in the trashcan so that anyone randomly flipping through the book would realize that it was in someone's personal wastebasket, rather than a random public one. The quote above also gives some indication of what Spade's intent is. Hammett used these three stylistic innovations s

Some common words found in the essay are:
Maltese Falcon, Spade Call, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, stylistic innovations, found page, maltese falcon, fragmented narrative, detail story, amount detail,
Approximate Word count = 820
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)