A Hammett-Seasoned Assembly

(Above) R-Evolution, American artist Marco Cochrane’s 47-foot-tall, steel rod-and-mesh sculpture of a nude woman, rises from Embarcadero Plaza on the San Francisco waterfront. It has stood there in front of the Ferry Building since April 2025.

Time was when I visited San Francisco regularly—maybe once a year, or at least once every couple of years. However, before last week, a full decade and a half had elapsed since my previous call on Northern California’s most colorful and captivating metropolis; the last time was back in 2010, when Bouchercon took over the Hyatt Regency hotel on the Embarcadero, directly across from the historic Ferry Building. During the interim, I’d seen stories about how that City by the Bay had fallen into social and financial decline. Elon Musk, the South Africa-born right-winger who founded Tesla and destroyed Twitter (today’s X)—and who is a product of Silicon Valley, the high-tech hub located just to the south—had portrayed San Francisco as “a crime-ridden wasteland where homeless drug addicts freely roam.”

So I was fully prepared to see this place I have loved for so long reduced to a shadow of its erstwhile glory. Yet that isn’t what I found. In fact, central San Francisco looked pretty much like every other big city I’ve traveled to since the COVID-19 pandemic. There were scattered empty storefronts along Market Street, and one of my all-time favorite breakfast venues—Dottie’s True Blue Café, formerly on Jones Street but moved since my last drop-by to a larger, Sixth Street location—had shut its doors. Yes, there were some unhoused residents on sidewalks, benefiting from this burg’s moderate climate and extensive public services, but no more than I see nowadays in Seattle or Portland ... and none of them were shooting up in the gutters. San Francisco struck me as a locale that’s weathered bad economic times and is on its way to finding its footing again.

It certainly did a superb job of hosting the 2026 Left Coast Crime convention, which was held last week (Thursday, February 26, to Sunday, March 1) in the same Hyatt Regency I’d frequented 15 years ago.

Not surprisingly, given that (1) we were in Dashiell Hammett country and (2) this year brought an end to copyright restrictions on the author’s detective-fiction masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon, there was considerable attention paid to that 1930 novel. Falcon statuettes were presented to all four of LCC 2026’s guests of honor. One of the gathering’s Thursday panel discussions found Bay Area author Mark Coggins and Randal S. Brandt—who writes The Rap Sheet’s “Book Into Film” column and curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library—examining the book’s still-enduring impact on crime fiction. And that same night, Coggins and Brandt appeared together at a downtown used bookshop to chat with other mystery enthusiasts about Poltroon Press’ recent re-release of The Maltese Falcon, to which both contributed.

One of this convention’s first panel exchanges was “Let’s Talk About the Black Bird,” which addressed Dashiell Hammett’s best-known novel, The Maltese Falcon. Participating were—left to right—authors Elizabeth Crowens (Bye Bye Blackbird), Domenic Stansberry (the North Beach mysteries, The Lizard), and Kelli Stanley (the Miranda Corbie series, The Reckoning), as well as librarian Randal Brandt, who moderated the colloquy. Not shown, but also part of the group, was Mark Coggins. He took this shot and e-mailed it to me with a note that joked, “Looks like someone photobombed them.”

Hours after that panel presentation concluded, Brandt and Coggins (shown above on the left and right, respectively) joined San Francisco author and philanthropist Robert Mailer Anderson (center) at Kayo Books, a treasury of used works on Post Street downtown, to celebrate Hammett’s considerable influence on today’s detective fiction. Afterward, Anderson—who rents the pocket-edition apartment at 891 Post where Hammett lived from 1927 to 1929 and penned his first three novels—escorted a few members of the audience on a brief tour of those rehabbed digs.

Yes, that’s me, Jeff Pierce, seated in the very apartment (#401) where ex-Pinkerton operative Hammett crafted his earliest novels and many of his short stories. Neither the wooden desk nor the typewriter are original fixtures, but they certainly add to the crib’s Jazz Age ambiance. (Photograph by Mark Coggins)

In a memorable treat for yours truly, immediately prior to the Kayo Books event, Coggins and I accompanied local novelist Robert Mailer Anderson (Boonville) to the fourth-floor apartment Hammett once rented at 891 Post Street, one block east of the bookshop. It was there, in the late 1920s, that Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon were all batted out noisily on a typewriter, the author likely working longer into the night than his neighbors would have preferred. For many years, architect and Hammett fan Bill Arney lived in those 275-square-foot lodgings, but after his passing in 2021, Anderson took over the rent. He has since restored the apartment to how it might have looked during Hammett’s time. Anderson is also working on a project that will bring modern authors into the place and film them reading excerpts from Hammett’s prose.

For a guy like me, who discovered Dashiell Hammett, Sam Spade, and the Continental Op during college, and who’s been re-reading their adventures ever since, this opportunity to stand where their fictional lives began was nothing short of electrifying.

Those four days in mostly sunny San Francisco were a whirlwind of activities, from genre panel discussions and serendipitous encounters in hallways with friends to the discovery of new attractions the city has to offer. A few of my other favorite experiences:

• My daily morning walks around downtown, during which I not only got exercise and fresh air, but made a point of reaching buildings and monuments familiar to me from my years of writing about SF history.

• Sitting down with local author Kelli Stanley and talking about her efforts to relocate from the United States to Europe; her latest novel, The Reckoning; and how she couldn’t relax at LCC because she needed to get home and finish her sequel to that book by its deadline.

• Chatting up the friendly doorkeepers at the Hyatt Regency and finally questioning them about where to find the best Mexican food in the Mission District. This provoked much debate and research, until they finally directed me to Gallardos at 3248 18th Street (corner of 18th and Shotwell). I took the BART train down to the 16th and Mission station, then walked south on Mission and left on 18th for three more blocks. My being the only white guy in the restaurant suggested authenticity, as did the fact that credit cards weren’t accepted—Gallardos is cash-only. And the food? Well, I ordered the Guadalajara Dinner, a combination plate featuring an enchilada, a chili relleno, and a taco. With a side of house-made tortillas! It was savory and filling, and more than I could eat, but I had no refrigerator in my hotel room to hold the leftovers. I’ll definitely go back there the next time I’m in the Bay Area.

• Finding myself at the hotel bar next to Chicago’s Lori Rader-Day, an hour before Saturday night’s Lefty Awards banquet was to commence. I first met Lori during an airport shuttle ride into Raleigh, North Carolina, for Bouchercon 2015—back when she was just starting her career composing fiction. Since then, she’s produced six more novels, among them this year’s Wreck Your Heart, and survived breast cancer. I have done … well, nothing even remotely so courageous or dramatic. But it was good to catch up for a spell over gin-and-tonics.

• And then after the banquet and prize dispersals, joining Los Angeles author Gary Phillips at that same bar. He told me about the delights of rearing his late daughter’s young child, and briefed me on his soon-forthcoming novel, The Haul, which recounts the story of a professional thief coming out of retirement to engineer “a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker.” Gary and Lori are such kind and generous people; I’m sorry I live so far from them.

When Sunday rolled around, I was not close to being ready for departure. I mused on how wonderful it might be to spend another week roaming San Francisco, just photographing sidewalk scenes and the elegant decorations of old buildings. I hadn’t had a chance during my stay to wander out to spacious Golden Gate Park. Or to hop a Powell-Hyde Cable Car to The Buena Vista café, which is credited with introducing Irish coffees to the United States in 1952. Nor had I stopped at John’s Grill on Ellis Street, where Spade ordered “chops, baked potatoes, [and] sliced tomatoes” in The Maltese Falcon.

But I had to be back home the next day, so couldn’t stay. Next time, I told myself. And next time would be sooner than 15 years off!

Thursday’s “Thoughts on Podcasting” session was moderated by Jaime Parker Stickle (far left), author of the Corey in Los Angeles series and host of The Girl with the Same Name. Tackling the topic with her were Sabrina Thatcher (Slaying the Craft: Inside the Mind of a Thriller Writer), Jim Fusilli (Writers at Work), Mike Adamick (Crime Adjacent), and Dan White (OutWithDan).

“The Liars Panel” on Friday was one of this convention’s more unusual offerings, but its title says it all. Five writers told stories of their encounters with famous people, and the audience was charged with identifying which were factual and which were fabricated. Shown from left to right: Lee Matthew Goldberg (The Great Gimmelmans), Holly West (The Money Block), the legendary Sara Paretsky (creator of the V.I. Warshawski series), Lori Rader-Day (this panel’s moderator), and Lina Chern (Tricks of Fortune).

Guest of Honor Gary Phillips was interviewed onstage Friday afternoon by fellow fictionist Christa Faust (The Get Off). During their engaging 45-minute exchange, Phillips was asked which of all his books he would like to have outlast him. His answer: Violent Spring, his 1994 debut novel (featuring private eye Ivan Monk), and his 1999 standalone, The Jook.

Finally, Lori Rader-Day’s selfie showing the two of us enjoying chilled libations in the Hyatt Regency’s lobby bar.