The private detective novels of Dashiell Hammett Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane have provided the source for some of Hollywoods most successful controversial and baffling films. Spanning almost the whole of the studio era the private eye minigenre boasted stars like William Powell Humphrey Bogart and Dick Powell as well as topcalibre directors John Huston Edward Dmytryk and Robert Aldrich. Yet the movies themselves still manage to remain something of an enigma MGMs influential adaptation of Hammetts The Thin Man has been all but ignored by critics and historians while classic entries such as The Maltese Falcon and Murder My Sweet are usually considered only within the wider context of film noir.