“Readers may have different senses how these noiremes cohere into a meta-film, but the individual commentaries are unfailingly insightful and suggestive of the noir ethos. In addition to the usual suspects, films include Sunset Boulevard, It's a Wonderful Life, Blade Runner, Batman Begins, and Good Night and Good Luck. This last chapter, a model for close analysis, will reward the reader more than the opening chapters. . . . Recommended.”—Choice
“A lucky combination of academic rigor and verbal playfulness, The Maltese Touch of Evil is provocatively open-ended. The authors, smooth writers both, are perceptive close readers, and their high-spirited commitment to unpacking selected noire moments is contagious: they make you want to join their conversation, whether in agreement or correction, defense or denial. Their intensive work reminds us yet again of the peculiar richness of the noir canon.”—Foster Hirsch, author of The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir and Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir