Saturday, July 05, 2025

Yet Another Spade Showing

We last heard from longtime friend of the site Mark Coggins, the creator of series private eye August Riordan, earlier this year, after his surprising acquisition of Raymond Chandler’s Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter. But he contacted us again this week, to say he has a new short story available that connects him to yet another prominent developer of American detective fiction:
The Maltese Falcon [1930], by Dashiell Hammett, entered the public domain on January 1st of this year. This means that other authors are free to take the character of Sam Spade and the story of the Falcon and run with it. In fact, crime-fiction publisher Hard Case Crime has already announced plans to release Return of the Maltese Falcon, by Max Allan Collins, in January of 2026. The new book promises to pick up “where legendary author Dashiell Hammett left off, telling the story of iconic private eye Sam Spade and the quest for the priceless Maltese Falcon.”

I, like Collins, have long had a fascination with the book, and I, too, have been interested in trying my hand at a Sam Spade story. I’m pleased to announce that my attempt at such a story, “Mockingbird,” has been published in the July/August 2025 issue of
Eclectica Magazine. You can read it here.

Collins and I share the same middle name (mine being spelled “Alan”) and have the same initials (MAC). Even our last names are pretty damn similar, so perhaps it’s fitting we both took a whack at answering the question, “What happen to the Falcon?”
Mark mentions that he is currently working on another Spade investigation—“a sequel to a sequel, if you will”—tentatively titled “The Russian Egg.” We look forward to reading that tale as well, perhaps while we await the release of Collins’ Return.

1 comment:

Mark Coggins said...

Thanks for the mention, Jeff. Over on Hammett guidebook author Don Herron's site there's a discussion of the research/guessing I did on the location of Floyd Thursby's hotel in San Francisco. https://donherron.com/hammett-mockingbird-joins-early-what-could-be-legions/