This week’s selection of books includes mysteries: from crime noir to the earliest detective story to a children’s book that kids will love. Fiction Crime Noir at Its Best ‘The Maltese Falcon’ By Dashiell Hammett Great fiction requires great characters. Led by detective Sam Spade, the story revolves around unscrupulous characters, including the lovely but dangerous Brigid O’Shaughnessy and criminals Joel Cairo and Casper Gutman, all vying for the elusive Maltese Falcon. Black Lizard, 1992, 217 pages Style and Insight Make This Novel ‘A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel’ By Amor Towles It’s 1922, and a Bolshevik tribunal has sentenced Count Alexander Rostov to spend the rest of his life in the Hotel Metropol, under penalty of death should he ever leave the premises. Inadvertently protected by his sentence from the murders and imprisonments following the wake of the Revolution, the aristocrat creates a good life for himself, forging friendships …