A worthless bird statuette -- the focus of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. And much more.

As Dashiell Hammett closes his final case as a private eye, the details of which will later inspire his most famous book, he acquires at a police auction the bogus object of that case, an obsidian falcon statuette. He casually sets the memento on his desk, where for a decade it bears witness to his literary rise. Until he gives it away.

Now, suffering writer's block, the famous author begins to wonder about rumors of the falcon's "metaphysical qualities," which link it to a...