Spade Goes Back to Bird Hunting

Pinkerton detective-turned-author Dashiell Hammett realized he had something special on his hands when he submitted his revised, typewritten version of The Maltese Falcon to publisher Alfred A. Knopf in July 1929, asking that Knopf (who had previously handled his books Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) practice restraint in editing this latest manuscript. As Hammett scholar Richard Layman has explained: “He knew what he was doing, he said. Hammett wanted to get his third book right. It was a departure work for him, his attempt to break away from the formulas of pulp fiction to create a work with serious literary value.” Although the writer resisted changes by copy editors, he continued to tweak his own story—which had originally appeared (in slightly different form) in five monthly segments in Black Mask magazine—right up to when Knopf finally sent it away for printing. The completed novel was released on February 14, 1930.

Ninety-six years later, with the copyright on Hammett’s best-remembered (and most-filmed) tale having lapsed at the end of 2025, Iowa crime-fictionist Max Allan Collins seeks to add another “something special” to the Falcon legend. In Return of the Maltese Falcon, released this month by Hard Case Crime, he has boldly resuscitated the original book’s “hard and shifty” protagonist, San Francisco private investigator Samuel Spade, and sent him back out to locate the bejeweled bird of the title—which, you will likely recall, was never recovered in Hammett’s hard-boiled classic.

Penning a sequel to such a seminal genre work can only be characterized as intimidating. Indeed, Collins acknowledges that “avoiding strictly pure mimicry, and writing in my own style while honoring Hammett’s, was a tightrope to walk.” But the critical reception for Return of the Maltese Falcon has so far been generally favorable. Kirkus Reviews remarks that “Collins’ dialogue sounds pleasingly like Hammett’s; his plotting is even twistier; and if his descriptions mix Hammett’s terse, affectless minimalism with Raymond Chandler’s fondness for florid similes, that’s clearly, as he notes in an engaging coda, his intention. Fans convinced that nobody could possibly continue a tale that ends so definitely owe it to themselves to give Collins a try.” Reviewer Ray Palen of Bookreporter says Return is “a work of wonder, and I enjoyed every second of it. Collins has not just inhabited Hammett’s world but breathed new life into it and made it distinctly his own.” Finally, prolific author and blogger James Reasoner observes that, “stylistically, Collins’ fast-moving, straight-ahead prose isn’t quite as stripped down as Hammett’s, but it’s certainly in the same ballpark.” He adds: “The resolution of the mystery and the way the book wraps everything up are extremely satisfying.”

As Collins has stated in the past, he fell in love with The Maltese Falcon in 1961, when he was 13 years old and first watched the 1941 Humphrey Bogart movie adaptation on television. Not until much later did he consider recruiting Sam Spade into a new story—not necessarily a Falcon follow-up, but at least another novel starring the same principal. (Spade’s single other book-length appearance came in Joe Gores’ authorized 2009 Falcon prequel, Spade & Archer.) Collins’ idea for a sequel dates back to 2024, when he included it in a future-projects sales pitch to Titan Books, the British owner of Hard Case Crime. Like numerous other readers, Collins was curious to know what happened after the events recounted in Hammett’s yarn—not just what became of the ever-elusive falcon statuette, but, as he told CrimeReads recently, how Sam Spade might “extricate himself from the ruins he’s made of his life and business.”

To help him answer those questions in Return of the Maltese Falcon, Collins brings back most of the original novel’s cast—some in secondary roles—while beefing up the involvement of several players to whom Hammett had assigned lesser parts. (Have no doubt: You should definitely have read the 1930 book before tackling Return.)

His action begins in December 1928, shortly after Spade failed to locate the gold, gem-encrusted (but now black enamel-covered) falcon at the center of the earlier story, and handed over his fetching but deceitful client, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, to the San Francisco cops for the murder of his detective partner, Miles Archer. Effie Perrine, Spade’s “lanky, tawny-haired” secretary (at 23, a decade Spade’s junior), has erected a Christmas tree where Archer’s desk once sat, and their office is looking “moderately successful” despite the “bad publicity” of late. Through the door comes Rhea Gutman, the “pale and petite,” 18-year-old blonde “daughter” of corpulent criminal Casper Gutman, who supposedly spent years chasing after the Maltese falcon, a treasure crafted for the King of Spain in the 1500s, only to have it stolen by a Russian general named Kemidov, and replaced with a fake. It seems that, like her late progenitor, Rhea is hungry to get her hands on the black bird, and she’ll split the rich proceeds with Spade if he can bring it to her.

(Left) The Maltese Falcon, Alfred A. Knopf first edition, 1930.

Not surprisingly, the shamus accepts her offer. What he hadn’t expected was to then be approached by three more people wanting him to find the artifact (what he terms the “dingus”) on their behalf: Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan; a British Museum official, Steward Blackwood, who contends his institution holds true title to the falcon; and Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s younger sister, Corrine Wonderly. While raking in retainers from them all, he returns to his hunt for what has become the most famous “MacGuffin” in crime-fiction history. Spade’s investigation will eventually lead him to a violent clash with Casper Gutman’s erstwhile “gunsel,” Wilmer Cook; jail interviews with the aforementioned Miss O’Shaughnessy as well as dandyish Joel Cairo, familiar from the original tale and here claiming to know a private collector who’ll pay handsomely for the statuette; run-ins with police and the local district attorney; the discovery of an unidentified corpse in San Francisco Bay, in whose pocket is found Spade’s business card; a Golden Age-style gathering of suspects he hopes will flush out a killer; and late-in-the-game identity switches that I, for one, didn’t see coming.

When I first learned that Max Allan Collins would be revitalizing Sam Spade in a continuation novel—a sequel to one of American detective fiction’s founding yarns, no less—I felt a moment’s consternation. However, I reminded myself that Collins, who was named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master in 2017, is a crackerjack tale-spinner who has given us two estimable series (a historical one starring Chicago gumshoe Nate Heller, and a second featuring the hit man known only as Quarry), and that he’s already succeeded in extending the life of another notable P.I., Mike Hammer, writing 13 new novels to add to the 13 Mickey Spillane had produced by the time he died in 2006. Furthermore, Collins put another iconic sleuth—Philip Marlowe—through his paces in “The Perfect Crime,” composed for the 1988 collection Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, edited by Byron Preiss. (He subsequently swapped Marlowe for Heller and added that story to his 2001 “casebook,” Kisses of Death.)

If anyone had the chops and chutzpah necessary to extend Spade’s otherwise brief career, it was definitely Collins.

With its text having now entered the public domain, this seems to be the season to celebrate Dashiell Hammett’s third novel. Publisher Poltroon Press has brought a new, photo-embellished hardcover version of The Maltese Falcon to market that also features a pair of Spade short stories inked by modern San Francisco-area author Mark Coggins. Blackstone has released its own “collectors edition,” complete with black-and-white illustrations and artistically sprayed page edges. Meanwhile, Steeger Books is selling hardback (or paperback) copies of the Falcon as it was serialized in Black Mask, with more than 2,000 textual variations from the final, 1930 book, and including the original pulp-style interior art by Arthur Rodman Bowker. Finally, notebook maker Field Notes has packaged that same magazine edit in imitation of the World War II-era Armed Service Editions.

Return of the Maltese Falcon is altogether something bigger, though. In this, his 53rd year as a published author (Bait Money, his debut novel, came out in 1973), Collins has given us not only an homage to Hammett’s most memorable composition; he’s drawn a direct line between himself and that august scribbler of yore, emphasizing the fact that he wouldn’t have the award-winning career he does without Hammett and other ink-slinging pioneers having laid the foundations of the popular field in which he toils. There will be Hammett purists who object vociferously to Max Allan Collins, or anybody else, employing Sam Spade in fresh adventures. Yet when the results are as delightful, dramatic, and downright satisfying as Return of the Maltese Falcon, it’s hard to argue that the effort should never have been made.

Below are a few questions I addressed to Collins about the devising of his latest novel. I had intended to post this interview earlier in January, but was delayed by computer problems.

(Above) The Adventures of Sam Spade comic strip from June 6, 1948. You can enjoy more examples of this strip, with their Wildroot Cream-Oil promotions, by clicking here.

J. Kingston Pierce: When, and under what circumstances, did you first discover Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade?
      
Max Allan Collins: I knew vaguely about him, as a kid, seeing Wildroot Cream-Oil ads in comic books and Sunday sections, tying in with the Sam Spade radio show. These were in comic-strip form and drawn, I believe, by the great Lou Fine.

The TV craze of private-eye shows, which followed the similar fad of TV westerns, led me to Dashiell Hammett’s novels when they were reprinted in 1961 with Harry Bennett covers. I thought then, and now, that The Maltese Falcon was the best private-eye novel ever.

JKP: And when in your career did you start thinking about writing a sequel to The Maltese Falcon? Did your ideas of what might happen in that book change significantly over time, or have the parameters of your latest novel been in place in your mind for a long while?
      
MAC: The Maltese Falcon’s 1929 publication date sparked the idea for my historical Nathan Heller novels—1929 was the year of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which meant Al Capone and Sam Spade were contemporaries—meaning the private eye now existed in a historical framework. My Nate Heller could bump up against all sorts of real people and real crimes.

Probably around 20 years ago, I looked into when the novel would come into the public domain. The copyright I was looking at was 1930, when the 1929 Black Mask serial was collected in book form by Knopf. I was just keeping an eye on Sam Spade with no exact thought of doing a direct sequel—just another Spade story.

But when it came time to actually pitch the notion to a publisher (Titan/Hard Case Crime), the idea of picking up the story where it left off in Hammett seemed a natural.

(Right) The Maltese Falcon debuted in Black Mask in September 1929.

My wife, Barb, with whom I write the Antiques/Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery series [under the joint pseudonym Barbara Allan], told me to brace myself for attacks.

JKP: Indeed, some people might scold you for your gall in capitalizing on this famous detective tale. Others would ask why we need a Falcon sequel at all. How do you respond to such critics?
      
MAC: I didn’t write it for the critics, particularly the naysayers who haven’t read, or have no intention of ever reading, my book. The novel is born out of my love for Hammett and the P.I. form (which he birthed). As a fan of The Maltese Falcon, I had been frustrated by its inconclusiveness. In certain respects, that unsolved ending seems perfect, the overriding irony. But some readers, myself included, couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened next.

JKP: What do you think you bring to Spade's story that another author might not be able or willing to bring?
      
MAC: I felt up to the job. I knew I could accomplish, or come close to, Hammett’s limited omniscience—his stingy third-person, in which we are never told what the detective is thinking. In a very real way, Sam Spade—not the killings—is the mystery at the heart of The Maltese Falcon.

Spade reveals himself in the original novel in the last few chapters—his strict adherence to his own code of ethics, a personal morality in an amoral world. My novel explores where that leaves him at the end of Hammett’s masterpiece, and how certain things might resolve.

JKP: How did you go about preparing yourself to write a tale in the fashion of Hammett? What characteristics of his writing or storytelling style did you adopt? What, if any, compromises did you make?
      
MAC: The most important thing was to maintain Spade’s lack of inner monologue. The approach in The Maltese Falcon is often described as objective when it’s really quite subjective—Hammett tells us all sorts of things that Spade doesn’t. Consider this line about Brigid: “Her eyes were cobalt-blue prayers.”

I tried to honor the approach of Hammett and the character of Spade without completely abandoning my own style. That my novel was written so many decades later required me to consider it as at least somewhat a period piece. I allowed myself to describe clothing in a way Hammett might not have, for example, although he does do quite a bit of that himself.

But I researched San Francisco in the late ’20s and took Spade to locations that Hammett didn’t. My descriptions of buildings and neighborhoods and such are a slight departure from Hammett and might be considered a compromise. I consider it a necessity.

JKP: Before composing Return, did you re-read the original novel as well as the three Spade short stories he left behind? Did you draw on any academic or critical sources in preparation?
      
MAC: I read The Falcon again three times, twice taking notes, as the novel was of course the primary research source. I consulted no academic studies of Hammett, nor did I revisit other biographies, all of which I believe I’ve read. In addition, I listened to an audio-books version of the original serial in Otto Penzler’s The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories.

I did not re-visit either John Huston’s classic film or Roy Del Ruth’s earlier one, although I have of course seen both, the Huston film numerous times. I wanted to keep Bogart and the other famous players out and use only Hammett’s vision as he reported it.

I read Spade & Archer, by Joe Gores, on its publication in 2009 but did not revisit it. I stayed away from the AMC-TV series, Monsieur Spade. I wanted my sequel to be as pure as possible. I did re-read the three short stories, but used nothing from them. They are rather perfunctory for Hammett.

JKP: There are a number of familiar players revitalized for your story, some of whom—such as Iva Archer, the faithless wife of Spade’s late business partner—win more time in your sequel than they did in Hammett’s original yarn. But which characters did you bring to life that Hammett only mentioned? And of those enriched figures, which one or ones did you most enjoying developing?
      
MAC: I have two favorites, but discussing them would reveal a plot point I don’t wish to expose. Almost every character in Return of the Maltese Falcon appears or is mentioned in Hammett’s novel—Dixie Monahan, for example, and even the late Floyd Thursby, who is explored in some depth. A few have more stage time than Hammett gave them. Really, only Casper Gutman is absent, and that’s because he was killed—typically, off-stage—in The Maltese Falcon.

JKP: Spade actually gets to have sex in this novel! Of course, it's written in a much different era than that in which Hammett was working. Do you think Hammett would approve of your giving readers such an explicit window into his affairs?
      
MAC: Well, Spade had sex in The Maltese Falcon, too. He beds Brigid O’Shaughnessy, cold-bloodedly leaves her sleeping while he goes off to search her place, and later makes her strip. (None of that happens in Huston’s movie, but the earlier 1931 version comes close). I didn’t go anywhere, in that sense, that Hammett didn’t.

JKP: Ach! It’s been long enough since I read The Maltese Falcon, that Huston’s post-Motion Picture Production Code version—sans Spade’s amorous exploits—has supplanted my memory of the original plot, to some extent. But let’s move on.

In both Hammett's original and your new Return, Spade's “boyishly pretty” secretary, Effie Perine, never becomes a subject of her boss' sexual interest, although she seems quite open to the possibility. Did you consider changing their relationship, or is there something essential in their association that you did not want to upset?
      
MAC: I kept it the same, which is ambiguous. Effie licks the paper for one of Spade’s hand-rolled cigarettes while Spade, seated, leans his “weary” head against her hip, calling her “Honey.” To me, the implication in Hammett is that they had either slept together once—giving in to natural urges—or had come close, and decided it was a bad idea for their work relationship. They remain in an uneasy sexual truce.

(Right) Author Dashiell Hammett.

JKP: I must ask about the story you have Spade tell the comely Rhea Gutman on pages 96 and 97 of your new novel, which involves his once having worked for the Continental Detective Agency (presumably in San Francisco) and how he was assigned to find “a young man named Collinson.” First off, that story reminds me very much of Spade’s Flitcraft parable in The Maltese Falcon. Second, “Peter Collinson” was a pseudonym Hammett used early on in his writing career. Third, this memory links Spade firmly to Hammett’s Continental Op, who also worked for Continental. And finally, some of the facets of the story Spade recalls make it clear that Collinson is based on Hammett himself. Brilliant! How much fun did you have in cooking up that digression for Return?

MAC: That was a good deal of fun, but a challenge. Hammett did seemingly discursive but actually pertinent parables, like the Flitcraft one in The Maltese Falcon and the dream referred to in the title of The Glass Key, in all five of his novels. Red Harvest has one, too, and you could argue that the background about the cult in The Dain Curse may serve the same purpose. It was a distinctive element in his style and approach, telling you what the book is about but even reveals something pertinent while seeming to be off on a tangent—for example, the Flitcraft parable can be read as an oblique warning to Brigid that Spade is onto her. I wanted to come up with something of that nature that wasn’t fashioned out of whole cloth. I combined an event from Hammett’s detective days and how his writing life evolved into an apparent block. That “Collins” was in “Collinson” was of course an element. But there had to be a Flitcraft equivalent in my novel. I required it of myself. And obviously Sam Spade had to be a former Continental op.

JKP: When Hammett wrote his novel, it was a "modern" work. Return is very much a historical tale. What efforts did you make to establish and build on the period flavor of Return? How much research did you do into San Francisco of 1928?
      
MAC: The major sources, beyond the original novel, were Don Herron’s wonderful The Dashiell Hammett Tour with its compact, excellent biography of Hammett as well as the locations cited and shown; the WPA guides to San Francisco and California, original editions; and the North Point Press presentation of The Maltese Falcon, which includes vintage photos of locations and is heavily footnoted. A friend also provided a historical photo book on San Francisco.

JKP: Do you appreciate The Maltese Falcon now more than ever, after having dissected it and worked intimately with its plot and players?
      
MAC: My deep appreciation for The Maltese Falcon began 60 years before the writing of this sequel. I should perhaps mention that one of my methods for learning how to write fiction was reading favorite novels as a writer and not a reader, analyzing them as to style and technique. What interested me, in reading Hammett’s introduction to the [1934] Modern Library edition, is his admission … or, anyway, claim … that he wrote the book without any plot outline or even vague idea of where he was headed.

That’s astonishing. But he’s a fiction writer and could be lying. Either that, or he had a hell of a subconscious pulling the strings.
      
JKP: Hammett wrote only one novel and a trio of short stories about Sam Spade. Had he not been enticed away to Hollywood and all but given up on composing fiction, do you believe he would have penned more Spade yarns? Was the protagonist interesting enough to him, or had he exhausted his use for that man called Spade?
      
MAC: That’s a hard call. The lack of enthusiasm that some see in the three Spade short stories might indicate Hammett’s disinterest in the character. But really, his disinterest came from other places—his drinking, the Hollywood and radio success making it unnecessary to write, the possibility he was secretly collaborating with Lillian Hellman.  The Hellman connection at least indicates the shift in his interest to more high-flown goals than writing mystery fiction.

If he had stayed in mystery-writing mode, I think he likely would have written more Spade novels. He wrote two Continental Op novels, didn’t he? And two more Thin Man screen stories—After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man.

JKP: Finally, who’s the woman artist Irvin Rodriguez portrays on his cover for Return of the Maltese Falcon? Or who do you think it is?
      
MAC: Absolutely no idea. I do think it’s a lovely cover, and hope it attracts readers.

The P.I. Sam That G.I. Joes Missed

During World War II, roughly 122 million lightweight paperback books were distributed to members of the U.S. military in an “audacious and revolutionary” campaign to bring entertainment and knowledge to U.S. soldiers stationed abroad. The publication of those compact, horizontally formatted Armed Services Editions of more than 1,200 works—fiction and non-fiction, biographies, poetry, and more—“became one of the Army’s best morale boosters,” Literary Hub recalled a couple of years back, “offering a bit of light during those dark days. It also helped shepherd in an era of paperback supremacy and create millions of voracious readers in the process.”

The books’ size made it handy for soldiers to “tuck them away somewhere and hopefully finish a book at a later time,” says Book Riot. “Books were shared amongst soldiers, and they were so popular that many men began requesting specific titles and genres.”

Authors well represented in the ASE collection included Robert Benchley, Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zane Grey, Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, John O’Hara, W. Somerset Maugham, Edgar Allan Poe, Luke Short, George R. Stewart, Bram Stoker, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and H.G. Wells. Also made available were mysteries by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frances and Richard Lockridge, John P. Marquand, Ngaio Marsh, Craig Rice, and others.

(Above) Field Notes’ edition of Hammett’s classic detective yarn.

One talented fictionist who did not make the cut, despite the popularity of his short stories and novels, was Dashiell Hammett. Could the volunteer advisory panel charged with selecting the works for servicemen have been squeamish about Hammett’s membership in the Communist Party? Whatever the reason, his was a notable exclusion.

But that wrong is finally being righted by American notebook maker Field Notes, which has lately brought to market an ASE-style edition of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, featuring “the original text … as serialized in Black Mask magazine” in 1929. It even carries the promise on its front cover so familiar from the wartime releases: “This Is the Complete Book—Not a Digest.” Modern writer Kevin Guilfoile contributes an introduction to this edition. As the company’s Web site explains, “It’s the first new ASE since the program was ended in 1947.”

Field Notes is currently selling its pocket-size Maltese Falcon separately, for $18.95 (plus shipping), or as a bonus atop its newest three-pack seasonal offering of notebooks. Click here to order.

Between the issuance of Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon and Poltroon Press’ handsome hardcover version of Hammett’s single Sam Spade novel—both coming out in early January—plus this new Armed Services Edition of Falcon, the occasion of Hammett’s best-known private eye tale falling into the public domain on January 1, 2026, is certainly being well celebrated!

That Darn Bird Again, With Bonuses

I have mentioned before that Max Allan Collins has an excellent new book due for release from Hard Case Crime on January 6, 2026. Titled Return of the Maltese Falcon, it is of course a sequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon—his only novel featuring San Francisco private eye Sam Spade. But as it turns out, two occasional contributors to The Rap Sheet have an expanded edition of Hammett’s 1929 tale set for release on the very same day Collins’ yarn hits stores.

Expanded in what respect? Well, according to Northern California author Mark Coggins, creator of the August Riordan series, the hardcover version of The Maltese Falcon coming from Berkeley-based publisher Poltroon Press (shown at right) will feature not only the entirety of Hammett’s original story, but as a coda, a couple of Falcon sequels that Coggins produced and published recently in Eclectica Magazine. In the following note, he explains what motivated him to continue Spade’s adventures:

For a crime-fiction devotee like me, some stories never really end. They live in your head, the characters prowling the foggy streets of your imagination long after you’ve turned the final page. For me, and I suspect for many of you, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is chief among them. Sam Spade’s characterization of the black bird as “the stuff that dreams are made of” in the John Huston film is one of the all-time great last lines,* but it leaves a tantalizing question hanging in the air: What happened to the real falcon?

This year, I got the chance to answer that question for myself. When the copyright for Hammett’s masterpiece expired in January 2025, it felt like a door creaked open, inviting a new generation of writers to step into Spade’s world. I didn't hesitate. I sat down and penned a short story, “Mockingbird,” that picks up right where the novel left off, sending Spade back into the labyrinthine hunt for the genuine, jewel-encrusted bird. I’m happy to say the story found a home in Eclectica.

Writing new fiction in a world as richly realized as Hammett’s San Francisco is no small task. Authenticity is everything. My guiding star was Don Herron’s indispensable book, The Dashiell Hammett Tour. It’s a brilliant field guide to the city Hammett knew and wrote about.

To that I added some of my own research. Herron, for example, notes that the novel places gunman Floyd Thursby’s hotel on “Geary near Leavenworth” but doesn’t pinpoint a specific establishment. Armed with a 1928 San Francisco city directory, I went hunting. One establishment stood out as the most likely candidate: the Geary Inn Hotel at 725 Geary. Today, it’s called the Hotel Luz. I reached out to the current owner who told me that a writer who had been a tenant of his had independently come to the very same conclusion.

Once “Mockingbird” was finished, I didn’t let up. A second tale, “The Russian Egg,” followed immediately, continuing Spade’s quest. It was also published in Eclectica Magazine.

Beyond those Falcon follow-ups, Poltroon’s forthcoming edition will include Coggins’ black-and-white photographs of modern-day San Francisco, introducing each chapter. And the shot used on the cover? It’s of the alley where Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, was murdered. “One of the marvels of Hammett’s work,” says Coggins, “is how tangible his city remains. You can still stand outside Spade’s apartment building at 891 Post, look up at his office windows in the old Hunter-Dulin Building at 111 Sutter, and even walk into John’s Grill on Ellis Street and order the same meal he ate: ‘chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes.’ My photos will capture these enduring locations, bridging the nearly 100-year gap between his world and ours.”

Randal S. Brandt, who writes The Rap Sheet’s “Book Into Film” column and is curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, has prepared a new introduction for this edition. And the dust jacket will include a “mapback” showing crime-scene locations from both Hammett’s novel and Coggins’ stories.

All in all, this sounds like a volume that belongs on my shelves—right next to Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon.

* The actual last line is “Huh?” spoken by Detective Sergeant Tom Polhaus in response to Spade’s remark.

Of Spade, Scarlet, and Spies

• Back in July, San Francisco Bay-area author Mark Coggins published a short story in Eclectica magazine titled “Mockingbird,” which revitalized Dashiell Hammett’s best-recognized shamus, Sam Spade, and sent him chasing once more after the elusive bejeweled Maltese falcon. Now, Coggins is back with “The Russian Egg,” appearing in the October/November edition of Eclectica. Picking up where “Mockingbird” left off, it finds the “hard and shifty” Spade being employed by Rhea Gutman, supposedly the daughter of the late and corpulent criminal Casper Gutman, one of the principal antagonists in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1930). She wants him to find a different missing treasure: a Fabergé egg, once the property of Russian Dowager Empress Maria, which, like the falcon, may also have been smuggled into California, and may have drawn the covetous notice of real-life former U.S. senator James D. Phelan. Coggins’ two yarns—best read back to back—have Spade being threatened and shot at by guns; taking what turns out to be a deadly ferry ride; dining on broiled sturgeon steak with mushroom sauce at the now-famous Tadich Grill; and rolling far too many cigarettes to ensure his continued health. They provide a welcome opportunity to renew our acquaintance with a private eye who made a scant four appearances in Hammett’s fiction—in Falcon and three subsequent short stories.

• By the way, note that the “pale and petite” Rhea Gutman makes an early appearance, too, in Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon, due out from Hard Case Crime in January 2026. I already have a copy of that 224-page novel, but haven’t yet read it, preferring to wait until one day (soon) when I can truly savor the experience. Meanwhile, I’m thinking it might be fun to re-read Joe Gores’ Spade & Archer, his 2009 prequel to The Maltese Falcon.

• One more Spade-related item: In his blog, Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West, Evan Lewis features a program guide by one Elizabeth McLeod that recounts how Hammett’s “blond Satan” of a gumshoe became an old-time radio star.

• Season 6 of the Victorian-era sleuth series Miss Scarlet—formerly Miss Scarlet and the Duke—starring Kate Phillips and Tom Durant-Pritchard, will make its broadcast debut as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! lineup on Sunday, January 11, 2026 (though PBS Passport members can begin streaming its half-dozen episodes on December 7). The Masterpiece Web site offers a few “first-look images” to tantalize the show’s longtime fans.

• From now through April 6, 2026, Oxford, England’s Bodleian Libraries are hosting “Tradecraft,” an exhibition based on the late author John le Carré’s private archive that “offers unique insights into the working methods of the writer who shaped the modern spy novel. ‘Tradecraft’ is a word le Carré used to describe the techniques of espionage, but it might also be applied to his own skilled craft as a writer and social commentator.” Among the materials spanning le Carré’s life are “research, drafts, and corrections for his novels, non-fiction, and adaptations, as well as personal correspondence. Highlights include annotated manuscripts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Constant Gardener, and The Little Drummer Girl; previously unseen family photographs; original sketches and watercolour paintings; and letters to fans and friends.”

• For Spybrary, Shane Whaley interviews professor Federico Varese and Dr. Jessica Douthwaite, who co-curated “Tradecraft.” A write-up on the Web site explains that “They explore how the exhibit reveals le Carré’s working methods, personal life, and research habits. From manuscript drafts and scribbles on hotel stationery to his mother’s abandoned suitcase, the conversation explores how le Carré meticulously researched his books, how he conceives characters like George Smiley, and what the curators hope visitors take away.”

• Author talks worth checking out: Sarah DiVello fires questions at Walter Mosley about his latest book, Gray Dawn; Jeffrey James Higgins chats with Reed Farrel Coleman (Sleepless City); Chicago Review of Books’ Lori Rader-Day quizzes Jake Hinkson on the subject of his brand-new novel of “dirtbag decisions,” You Will Never See Me; and with Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper, Julia Kelly discusses her Evelyne Redfern series (A Dark and Deadly Journey, etc.).

• Finally, congratulations are in order for two blogs prominent on my radar. “Puzzle Doctor” Steve Barge celebrates 15 years of helming In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, while Peter Hanson counts the same number of years writing Every ’70s Movie.

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.

“Everybody Has Something to Conceal”

Seven months after news broke that author Max Allan Collins was composing a sequel to The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett’s genre-defining 1930 private-eye novel, the cover art for Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon has been released by Hard Case Crime.

This book is scheduled for publication in January 2026.

A plot synopsis says that Return “brings closure to this crime classic, reuniting all the surviving members of the original cast alongside femme fatales, crooked collectors, and greedy gangsters for one more thrilling, deadly chase through the streets, wharves, morgues, bars, and back alleys of 1920s San Francisco—and finally answers the question, Whatever became of the Maltese falcon …?”

An Earful of Spade

Being a resolute fan of the 1941 film version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, I always think of that as the definitive big-screen presentation. But of course, there were two previous cinematic interpretations: one that came out in 1931, under Hammett’s title, and the other released in 1936 as Satan Met a Lady.

In addition, that memorable story of greed and gumshoeing was adapted more than once for radio. As Evan Lewis reminds us today in his blog, Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West, Hollywood luminary Edward G. Robinson played San Francisco private eye Sam Spade in an hour-long, Lux Radio Theatre production of Hammett’s yarn that aired on February 8, 1943. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre—all of whom had starred in 1941’s The Maltese Falcon—reprised their roles in an abbreviated, 30-minute adaptation of the movie from September 1943. I also find on YouTube a slightly different, and shorter version—also starring Bogart—that was reportedly broadcast in July 1946.

I must now resist the compulsion to spend the remainder of this afternoon listening to each one of those, back to back.

Brigid Loves Birdie

Let’s cut to the chase: Today marks 80 years since the premiere showing, in New York City, of Humphrey Bogart’s The Maltese Falcon, the third adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s marvelous 1930 novel introducing San Francisco private eye Sam Spade. (It had previously been shot in 1931, also under the book’s title, and in 1936 as Satan Met a Lady.) It’s a film I first watched—rapt by its noirish atmosphere and punchy parlays—in a Portland, Oregon, theater that specialized in classic pictures, but have seen more than a dozen times since. I may even screen it again this evening, to commemorate its birthday.

The story has just about everything going for it: a case filled with misdirection; a loner gumshoe, tough-talking but surprisingly sensitive at times, who won’t be anyone’s chump; a femme fatale of outstanding dimensions; a calculating, smooth-talking chief villain; and of course, a long-lost, mysterious McGuffin. At this late date, it hardly seems necessary to spell out the plot, but here it is anyway, borrowed from an essay about the 1941, John Huston-directed movie published earlier this year on—of all things—the World Socialist Web Site:

The Huston film is conspicuously faithful to the Hammett book. Virtually every line of dialogue is borrowed from the original source. In San Francisco, private investigator Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) becomes involved with a group of devious and scheming adventurers in pursuit of a solid gold, jewel-encrusted statuette allegedly worth a king’s ransom.

The series of events, which ultimately leads to the killing of three men (four in the novel), begins with a visit by a Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor) to the offices of Spade and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). She claims to be looking for her wayward younger sister, who is keeping company with a roughneck, Floyd Thursby. Spade and Archer (who personally volunteers to follow Wonderly that evening) agree to take the case.

The same night, Archer turns up dead, shot at close-range. Only a half-hour later, Thursby is also murdered. The police come knocking at Spade’s door, hinting that he might have killed Thursby in revenge for his partner’s being knocked off. Spade angrily rejects the imputation, and also protects the identity of his client.

In any event, everything that “Miss Wonderly” told Spade and Archer was untrue, starting with her name, which is actually Brigid O’Shaughnessy. However, when Spade tracks her down, she still refuses to explain what she is up to. Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) soon arrives at Spade’s office and offers the private eye $5,000 if he can help locate a mysterious “black figure of a bird.” Later, Spade encounters Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet), and his hired thug, Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.). Cairo, O’Shaughnessy and Gutman, the latter of whom fills in the details about the object of their collective desire, have been pursuing the figurine, which supposedly dates from the 16th century, all across the globe.

In the end, no one ends up with the supposedly priceless gold bird, several people are dead and others on their way to prison.

Hammett never penned another Spade novel, though he did later produce three short stories featuring the character. Still, that P.I. went on to become a radio-drama star in the 1940s and early ’50s, portrayed most memorably by Howard Duff. In 1946, The Maltese Falcon was adapted into comic-book form, with artwork by Rodlow Willard. George Segal starred as “Sammy” Spade Jr. in a comedy sequel of sorts, 1975’s The Black Bird. And kind of making up for Hammett’s failure to deliver another Sam Spade book, in 2009 veteran crime-fictionist Joe Gores published a prequel to Falcon, titled Spade & Archer.

I’ve written many times on this page about The Maltese Falcon, occasionally including video clips from the flick. But with today being its 80th anniversary and all, I’ve decided enough is never enough. So below you’ll find two treasures: the original Warner Bros. trailer, and the scene in which Brigid O’Shaughnessy—anxious to escape police pursuit and solicit Spade’s assistance in securing the infamous black bird for herself—pleads for the shamus’ sympathy, knowing from the outset, no doubt, that she hasn’t a hope in hell of winning it.





READ MORE: “The Maltese Falcon 80 Years On,” by John Harvey (Some Days You Do …); “Why Writers Are Always in Pursuit of the Maltese Falcon,” by Gordon McAlpine (CrimeReads); “Regarding the Real-Life Mystery of the Maltese Falcon, a Famous Movie Prop Lost for Decades” (SFist); “The Maltese Falcon: The Best Covers, Ranked” (CrimeReads).

Bullet Points: Back from Vacation Edition

I spent last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota, visiting my best friend from college, Byron Rice. The break from work was much appreciated. Beyond sampling a new restaurant or two, imbibing some novel local beers, and engaging in a bit of birdwatching, we also did touristy things, such as visiting George Floyd Square, the memorial created at the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where in the spring of 2020, a white cop knelt fatally upon the neck of a 46-year-old hip hop artist and mentor, setting off social-justice protests worldwide. (See the photo above; that’s yours truly on the left.) We paid an extended call on Once Upon a Crime, a fine indie bookshop in the Whittier neighborhood, specializing in mystery fiction, where—among other things—I procured a couple of William Campbell Gault books not already in my collection. And we swung by Magers & Quinn Booksellers, on Hennepin Avenue, to browse its broader array of works.

Oh, and of course, we spent a lot of time reading out in Byron’s backyard—in shade whenever possible, as temperatures ranged from the high-80s to the mid-90s. I made my way through four books: The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, by Dean Jobb (Algonquin); People of Abandoned Character, by Clare Whitfield (Head of Zeus); The Killing Hills, by Chris Offutt (Grove Press); and Ridley’s War (FriesenPress), the second novel by sometime Rap Sheet contributor Jim Napier. I might have read more, but I felt the need periodically to toss tennis balls around with Byron’s dog, Shiloh—an endeavor that resulted in my sailing a couple over the back fence, never to be seen again. (Whoops!)

One weird thing happened on the flight back to Seattle. About half an hour before we landed, cabin attendants were summoned to assist a guy—maybe in his 40s—who was seated at the window two rows forward of me and on the left. He seemed to have stopped breathing, and a quick call was put out to anyone aboard with medical training. An evidently experienced older doctor and several younger men and women rushed to help, moving the patient out into the aisle at my feet, where they began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The patient was eventually relocated to the rear galley, where there was supposed to be more room. When we landed, emergency personnel rushed onto the plane and carried the man into the airport terminal. The rest of us were kept onboard for most of the next hour, and eventually off-loaded down a movable staircase onto the tarmac. We never did hear what had happened to the man, though I caught the end of a comment from one of the flight attendants, who said something about how it had been “too late by the time we got to him.”

Since my return home, I’ve searched for news online about this incident, but have come up with absolutely nothing.

I have, however, turned up a number of recent crime-fiction-related stories. In the absence of more information about that man on the plane, I’ll share some of those leads and tidbits here.

• A month after announcing its four shortlisted nominees—and sooner than the July 1 deadline previously set—Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association has declared a winner in the 2021 Margery Allingham Short Story Mystery Competition. She’s Netherlands resident and novelist Camilla Macpherson, whose tale “Heartbridge Homicides” was judged to fit Allingham’s definition of what makes a great story: “The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.” As this year’s victor, Macpherson will receive £500 as well as a pair of passes to CrimeFest 2022.

• Meanwhile, independent-press-oriented Foreword Reviews has made known the recipents of its 2021 INDIES Book of the Year Awards, in multiple categories. As far as Thriller/Suspense works go, Kevin Doherty’s The Leonardo Gulag is the Gold Winner, with Michael Pronko’s Tokyo Traffic being the Silver Winner, Michael Bradley’s Dead Air being the Bronze Winner, and Honorable Mention going to The Spiderling, by Marcia Preston. Mystery category champs are: A Child Lost, by Michelle Cox (Gold); The Burn Patient, by Sue Hinkin (Silver); Glass Eels, Shattered Sea, by Charlene D’Avanzo (Bronze); and Honorable Mention given to Andrew Nance’s Red Canvas. UPDATE: I neglected to mention, additionally, that Ann Parker’s seventh Silver Rush mystery, Mortal Music, was the Bronze winner in the INDIES’ Historical Adult Fiction category.

• Steve Aldous, author of The World of Shaft (2015), notes in his blog that June 23 marked the 50th anniversary of Richard Roundtree’s debut as New York City private eye John Shaft, in the 1971 movie Shaft. “Whilst by no means perfect,” Aldous remarks, “the film (based on Ernest Tidyman’s novel published the previous year) is rightly regarded as a landmark in cinema history. Shaft opened Hollywood up to black filmmakers, actors and technicians, and an explosion of ‘Blaxpolitation’ movies dominated cinema for the next two or three years. … Shaft was recognised at the 1972 Academy Awards, with Isaac Hayes’ theme winning the Oscar for Best Song and his soundtrack also nominated. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’” Aldous adds, “Here in the UK, the 50th anniversary is being celebrated by screenings of Shaft at a number of Everyman theatres across the country on Monday 28 June at 8.45 p.m.” If it has been some time since you last saw Shaft, maybe it’s time you watched it again yourself.

• After being brought down weeks ago by computer hackers, the Web site Shots appears to be back up and running.

• Speaking of Shots, its affiliated blog carries word of the four rookie novelists best-seller Val McDermid will showcase during her “New Blood” panel discussion at this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (July 22-25). Her choices:

— Greg Buchanan, Sixteen Horses (Mantle)
— Lara Thompson, One Night, New York (Virago)
— Patricia Marques, The Colours of Death (Hodder)
— Anna Bailey, Tall Bones (Doubleday)

“The unveiling of McDermid’s selection has become one of the most anticipated moments of the publishing calendar,” says Shotsmag Confidential, “with readers on the lookout to uncover their new favourite author and add the ‘next big thing’ to their bookshelves.”

• Making a welcome comeback, as well, is The Columbophile, whose unnamed author had been offline for months, due to a health crisis involving his/her young daughter. While I was away in the Midwest, though, what should appear but a piece about the Season 10 Columbo episode “Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health” (1991). Guest-starring George Hamilton, it’s described as “a tale of resentment, blackmail, pornography and murder set against the backdrop of hit network TV crime show Crime Alert.”

• Did you know director John Huston’s 1941 big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon was, at one time, slated to be retitled as The Gent from Frisco? Blogger Evan Lewis has the newspaper clippings to prove it.

• As In Reference to Murder reported last week, “On June 8, mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame in a ceremony that included an appearance by Rebecca Crozier, Green’s great-great granddaughter. Green’s The Leavenworth Case is one of the first mysteries penned by an American woman, and she is credited with developing the series detective in the form of Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force (although in three novels he is assisted by the nosy society spinster, Amelia Butterworth, the prototype for Miss Marple).” Video footage from those festivities can be enjoyed here.

• From that same blog comes this brief update to a story we posted here in March: “Harry Melling, best known as Dudley from the Harry Potter franchise, is set to play a young Edgar Allan Poe in the Netflix/Scott Cooper-directed murder mystery, The Pale Blue Eye. The film is a passion project of Cooper, who has tried making it for more then a decade, and also stars Christian Bale as a veteran detective tasked with solving a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bale’s detective partners with a detail-oriented young cadet (Melling), who will later become the world-famous author we all know today.”

• It looks like the ITV/BBC crime drama Shetland is back in business. According to The Killing Times, the sixth and seventh series of that show, based on novels by Ann Cleeves, “were due to film in 2020 and 2021 in locations on the Shetland Isles and around Scotland, and will again feature six hour-long episodes each. However, it looks as though production was halted due to the COVID pandemic.” No word yet on when Shetland might return to the airwaves.

• Earlier this month, CrimeReads carried a piece about vintage Shadow films that’s well worth finding. Penned by Hector DeJean, associate director of publicity at Minotaur Books, it begins:

The crimefighter known as the Shadow was a pop-culture sensation who arrived on the detective fiction scene before Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe, and Philip Marlowe, and whose extravagant war on evildoers predated those of Superman, Batman, the Lone Ranger, and Doc Savage. Americans during the Great Depression got regular doses of the Shadow via the radio and pulp magazines, and his adventures continue to this day in comic book form. Oddly, the character was never a big hit with movie audiences, despite decades of films that create an occasionally compelling but ultimately confusing portrait of the clever, menacing protagonist. Amazon Prime subscribers can check out some of these early attempts for free, and while none of the films are astounding, there are enjoyable elements sprinkled throughout, and none demand more than roughly an hour of one’s attention.

• Finnish author Juri Nummelin, who’s composing a book about American sleaze paperback writers, has assembled a list of their works that deserve consideration as crime fiction, too.

• The Rap Sheet already presented an extensive rundown of new crime, mystery, and thriller works due for publication this season. But now comes Janet Rudolph with her own lengthy inventory of older mysteries set during the warmer summer months.

• I read and enjoyed both Come Spy With Me and Live Fast, Spy Hard, Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens’ initial two John Sand espionage novels, though I haven’t yet had a chance to write about them. And now the pressure to do so is even greater: Collins writes in his blog that the series’ third installment, To Live and Spy in Berlin, is due out on July 14, from Wolfpack. That makes three fast-paced, James Bond-ish adventures published in just nine months! No wonder I can't keep up. “Will there be more John Sand books?” Collins asks. “That’s up to you. We have left something of an incredible effing cliffhanger [in book three] that needs resolving, so it’s on your conscience not ours if sales don’t justify that resolution.”

• Asks Literary Hub: “Which writers have the best tombstone inscriptions?” I’m going to go here with Billy Wilder.

• This may be just what you need: The organization Sisters in Crime has announced it “will award researchers grants of $500 for the purchase of books to support research projects that contribute to our understanding of the role of women or underrepresented groups in the crime-fiction genre. This may include but is not limited to research on women mystery writers, on the position of women writers in the crime fiction marketplace, or on gender, race, or ethnicity as an aspect of crime fiction.” The deadline for applications is July 15, 2021.

• Here’s something to look forward to. From a news release:

Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime are excited to announce Gun Honey, a new 4-part crime comic series written by Charles Ardai, the Edgar and Shamus award winner and co-founder of Hard Case Crime, with art by Ang Hor Kheng. Issue #1 launches September 15, 2021, with covers by superstar artist Bill Sienkiewicz and legendary movie poster artist Robert McGinnis.

Praised by comic creators Max Allan Collins (Ms. Tree), Ed Brubaker (Captain America) and Duane Swierczynski (Birds of Prey), Gun Honey is a story about weapons supplier Joanna Tan, the best in the world at providing the perfect weapon at the perfect moment. But when a gun she smuggles into a high-security prison leads to the escape of a brutal criminal, the U.S. government gives her an ultimatum: track him down or spend the rest of her life in a cell. …

“Gun Honey is a project I’ve been working on ever since we launched Hard Case Crime Comics five years ago, and I’m thrilled to finally get to share it with readers,” said Charles Ardai. “Anyone who loves Modesty Blaise or Alias or Uma Thurman in Tarantino’s Kill Bill will be drawn to Joanna Tan’s story the same way I was, and anyone who loves great comic book art will be floored by Ang Hor Kheng’s stunning debut.”

• A Shroud of Thoughts brings word that California-born actress Joanne Linville, “who guest starred on such classic TV shows as Studio One, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Columbo, died on June 20, 2021, at the age of 93.” I remember Linville best for her performance as a duped Romulan Commander in the third-season Star Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident.” However, her credits also include appearances on The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen, Have Gun—Will Travel, The Defenders, The Fugitive, Hawaii Five-O, Switch, Barnaby Jones, and L.A. Law. “Joanne Linville played a wide variety of roles throughout her career,” observes Terence Towles Canote, “and she gave a good performance nearly every time.”

• Finally, a few author interviews deserving of attention: Virginia writer S.A. Cosby chats with Do Some Damage’s Angel Luis Colón about his soon-forthcoming novel, Razorblade Tears; Texas’ Murder by the Book YouTube page hosts an entertaining conversation between Gytha Lodge (Lie Beside Me) and Chris Whitaker (We Begin at the End); former President Bill Clinton and James Patterson speak with Lee Child about their second joint thriller, The President’s Daughter; and if you’re a Twitter user, you can watch a recent CBS This Morning segment about Laura Lippman and her new standalone, Dream Girl.

Bullet Points: From All Corners Edition

(Above) J. Robert Janes signs his books at Bouchercon 2014.

• Canadian novelist J. Robert Janes has long ranked among my favorite historical crime-fictionists. His 16-volume, World War II-set series starring Jean-Louis St-Cyr, a chief inspector with the French Sûreté, and his unlikely investigative partner, Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler of the Nazi Gestapo, began with 1992’s Mayhem (aka Mirage) and continued through 2015’s Clandestine. Naturally, I have devoured the whole lot, plus Jones standalones such as The Hunting Ground (2013) and The Sleeper (2015). I had the delightful opportunity a decade ago to interview Janes for Kirkus Reviews and The Rap Sheet, and I finally met him at the 2014 Bouchercon convention in Long Beach, California. Back then, he said he was busy composing more novels, and in fact his old Web site proclaimed that a 17th St-Cyr/Kohler novel, Timeweaver, “now awaits a final read. The 18th St-Cyr and Kohler may well conclude the series, but that remains to be seen.” So whatever happened to those promised installments? I recently e-mailed Janes—who lives near Toronto, Ontario, and will turn 86 years old on May 23—to see how he’s doing. His response:

At my age now I’m lucky to be able to manage 18 blocks with my push chair. There are fortunately two little book kiosks en route, so I am able to get a few books now and then, and that kind of keeps me going. As to writing anything more, that’s really hard work and I’m totally retired, and reading the work of others finally, after all these years! You see, when I was writing I didn’t read other fiction because one can pick things up so easily and not even know they’ve done so. Therefore, I was just being careful. As for anybody at my age, my medical conditions are a real damper to doing a lot, and I’m very content just to go for my walks, read fiction books by others, and settle down with a cup of tea.

Janes’ wife of 64 years, Gracia, subsequently sent me an e-mail message, explaining that her husband’s health is fragile, that he suffers from “cancer and congenital heart failure.” She added, “He has retired knowing that he has published 34 books in four different genres (i.e., geology texts for elementary through university levels, children’s fiction, thrillers, and the 16-book St Cyr and Kohler series, and three other co-published books). All the words he has ever written are housed in over 140 boxes in the McMaster University Archives,” in Hamilton, Ontario. As to the existence of that 17th St-Cyr/Kohler novel? Well, Gracia says, “Timeweaver presents a puzzle”—and perhaps one that her husband cannot help solve. “Bob has a reluctance to talk about his books,” she confides, “as it saddens him that he is no longer able to write,” after more than three decades spent behind a keyboard, pounding out stories. She suggests the manuscript may be in the McMaster archives, “but not catalogued yet.” She continues to look. I’ll provide any updates Gracia shoots my way.

• Whenever a writer publishes a list purporting to name the “best” of anything, he or she becomes an immediate target of criticism. So it’s no surprise that this recent selection of “the 30 greatest literary detectives of all time,” by ShortList’s Marc Chacksfield, has attracted detractors. Among the sleuths included in Chacksfield’s tally: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Morse, Lew Archer, and Father Brown. Single-appearance players such as William of Baskerville (from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose), Inspector Bucket (from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House), and Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen (the star of Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow) also scored spots on the list, which has predictably stirred questions about why figures such as Ellery Queen, Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Maud Silver, and—for goodness sakes!—Nero Wolfe didn’t make the cut.

• The Sisters in Crime organization has launched its new Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. As Oline H. Cogdill explains in the Mystery Scene blog, “A $2,000 grant will be awarded to an up-and-coming writer who identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. … Candidates must apply by March 15, 2021. The winner will be announced in April, 2021.” Registration information is available here.

• With the 80th anniversary of the release of director John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon coming in October 2021, David Walsh, arts editor of the World Socialist Web Site, has posted this excellent assessment of the movie’s history and importance, its messages, and how its development fit into Huston’s filmmaking evolution.

• The Guardian’s Guy Lodge takes advantage of 2021 being the 100th anniversary of author Patricia Highsmith’s birth by highlighting the best film adaptations of her work. He reminds us, too, that “A glossy new Ben Affleck-starring film of her novel Deep Water, the first film from Adrian Lyne in 19 years, is scheduled for August, while a TV version of Ripley, starring Andrew Scott as her most adaptable character, is in the pipeline.”

• Like so many other literary festivals, Granite Noir is moving online this year. According to Shotsmag Confidential, Aberdeen, Scotland’s fifth annual celebration of homegrown and international crime writing will be streamed on the Aberdeen Performing Arts site from Friday, February 19, through Sunday the 21st. Ian Rankin, Camilla Läckberg, Stuart MacBride, Peter May, Jo Nesbø, Attica Locke, and David Baldacci are among the writers scheduled to participate. Click here to find a PDF containing the full roster of events.

• Then on Saturday, March 20, Hull Noir will return as a day-long festival based in the English port city of Kingston upon Hull. This year’s guests includes Mark Billingham, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, “Alex North” (aka Steve Mosby), and Hull-born Ian McGuire. The event will recognize, as well, this year’s “50th anniversary of the British crime [film] classic, Get Carter—adapted from Ted Lewis’s seminal crime novel Jack’s Return Home. For Lewis, who studied at Hull Art School in the late 1950s and whose novels reference the city and its hinterland, the towns on the south bank of the Humber, and the bleak Lincolnshire coast, 2021 is also the 50th anniversary of his novel Plender, this year’s festival read.” As Shotsmag Confidential notes, “There’ll be no charge for tickets, which will be available from Sunday 21 February along with the full festival lineup. Follow the Hull Noir Facebook and Twitter (@hullnoir) for all the most up to date information.”

• Here’s something I didn’t know: James Hong is a phenomenally prolific American actor, born to Hong Kongese parents, whose performance credits include roles in everything from Richard Diamond, Private Eye and Hawaii Five-O to Kung Fu, The Rockford Files, Switch, and the 1974 film Chinatown. He is also, according to blogger Lou Armagno, “the last living actor to portray a son (or daughter) of the fictional detective [Charlie Chan] in either a television series or film.” Hong was cast as “Number One Son” Barry Chan in the 1957-1958 TV drama The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, starring J. Carrol Naish. Hong will welcome his 92nd birthday this coming February 22nd.

• After applauding Robert McGinnis’ 93rd birthday two years ago in this longish piece for CrimeReads, I somehow managed to forget the artist’s 95th birthday this last Thursday, February 3. Fortunately, Deuce Richardson stepped up with a proper tribute in the DMR Books blog. After acknowledging McGinnis as “a national treasure,” Richardson reminds us that “He’s painted iconic characters ranging from James Bond to Barbarella to Captain America. He’s done covers for authors such as Rafael Sabatini, Neil Gaiman, John Jakes, Gardner F. Fox, Donald Westlake and Ian Fleming … and he’s still at it.” The DMR piece comes with a dozen beautiful examples of McGinnis’ work.



• By the way, whilst prowling around the Web early last week, I stumbled across a fake book front for Twilight Gal, created in imitation of one of McGinnis’ most famous covers, from the 1960 Dell paperback edition of Kill Now, Pay Later, by Robert Kyle. The artist here identifies him- or herself only as “astoralexander,” but explains that Twilight Gal re-imagines the video game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess “as a hard-boiled crime novel.” Both McGinnis’ cover and astroalexander’s respectful knock-off are above.

• My wife and I are currently in the midst of watching the first five episodes of Netflix’s French mystery thriller, Lupin. So I was interested to read, in B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder, that the show “is returning to Netflix for its second half of season one this summer. The series has become a surprising hit for the streamer, with 70M households projected to watch since its launch on January 8, making it easily Netflix’s biggest French original. The project is a contemporary adaptation of the novels penned by French writer Maurice Leblanc and stars Omar Sy as Assane Diop, who uses the world-famous gentleman thief and master of disguise, Arsène Lupin, as his inspiration as he tries to get revenge on those responsible for his father’s death.”

• While we’re on the subject of Netflix, let me point you to this piece in The Killing Times, containing the first trailer for Behind Her Eyes, a six-part TV adaptation of Sarah Pinborough’s 2017 novel of that same name. The KT’s Paul Hirons says this program “stars Eve Hewson, Simona Brown, Tom Bateman and Robert Aramayo, and tells the story of a single mother, whose world is thrown off kilter when she begins an affair with her new boss David and matters take an even stranger turn when she’s drawn into an unlikely friendship with his wife Adele. What starts as an unconventional love triangle soon becomes a dark, psychological tale of suspense and twisted revelations, as Louise finds herself caught in a dangerous web of secrets where nothing and no-one is what they seem.” Behind Her Eyes drops on February 17.

• Another promising trailer is that of Bloodlands, a BBC One mini-series starring “James Nesbitt as a Northern Irish detective on the hunt for a serial killer known as Goliath ...,” explains Radio Times. “In the 40-second trailer we meet detective Tom Brannick (Nesbitt) as he picks up a 20-year-old investigation into [the] ‘possible assassin’ they called Goliath and reveals to his team that the killer at large murdered his wife.” There doesn’t appear to be a set premiere date yet for Bloodlands; Radio Times says to expect it “later in the year.”

• John Porter reports in The Verge that delays in releasing No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film (currently slated to reach theaters on October 8) are “causing problems for its marketing deals, with advertisers concerned that the film may end up featuring outdated product placements.” He says “the movie could face reshoots to hide its outdated products, and … some scenes may be ‘carefully edited.’”

• So that’s what happened to Steve Hamilton. The last book published under his sole moniker, An Honorable Assassin (his third Nick Mason thriller), saw print in 2019. But next month, he will return as the co-author, with Janet Evanovich, of The Bounty, book seven in a series about FBI agent Kate O’Hare and con man Nicholas Fox, originally co-written with Lee Goldberg. The Real Book Spy tells more.

• Max Allan Collins revealed in a recent interview by Publishers Weekly that, with 2022 marking the 75th anniversary of private eye Mike Hammer’s debut, in I, the Jury, “I’ll be doing a biography of [Spillane] with James Traylor for Otto Penzler at Mysterious Press.” It was just two years ago that Collins commemorated the author’s 100th birthday with a blitz of special publications.

• After having picked up Jeff Vorzimmer’s The Best of Manhunt (2019) and last year’s The Best of Manhunt 2, you can bet I’m looking forward to the March 26 release of The Manhunt Companion, also from Stark House Press and co-edited by Peter Enfantino. In his blog Rough Edges, James Reasoner writes: “This book contains a history of the magazine, indexes of authors and stories that Manhunt published, plus reviews of every story from every issue. I’m not sure anything like this has ever been attempted before, let alone pulled off in such great style.” Click here to learn more about Manhunt (1952-1967).

• Washington Post book critic Ron Charles includes this smile-inducing tidbit in his latest newsletter:

After two weeks in office, Vice President Kamala Harris has already improved the economy of some yearbook owners. Used and rare bookseller AbeBooks reports that a set of three Howard University yearbooks—1984, 1985 and 1986—recently sold for $1,500. Those volumes include pictures of Harris, who graduated from the historically black university in D.C. in 1986. A photo of Howard’s Economics Society shows sophomore Harris with her fellow students and sponsor Joseph Houchins, who was once a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Federal Council of Negro Affairs.

• George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, has posted two pieces recently that are of likely interest to Rap Sheet readers. The first collects 39 vintage paperback fronts, each of which features one or more things we don’t see around much anymore. The challenge is to identify each of those anachronisms. The answers are all available at the post’s end.

• In this second piece, Easter showcases a splendid variety of “girl with a gun”-themed covers—one of which featured in Killer Covers’ not-long-ago-concluded 12th-anniversary celebration.

• Did you know that you can watch the entire run of Columbia Pictures’ 1943 Batman serial on YouTube? The 15 installments, starring Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, and J. Carrol Naish, begin here with a chapter titled “The Electric Brain.”

• Gothic-style lettering makes a comeback amid our modern plague.

• Mystery & Suspense finally gets around to reviewing The Devil and the Dark Water, by British wordsmith Stuart Turton—one of my favorite mysteries of 2020—and pronounces it “clever and fun. Addictively page-turning. And so very, very entertaining.”

• I don’t relish penning obituaries, yet it seems I must do so regularly. Hal Holbrook, for instance, cannot leave this world without fit acclamation. The Ohio-born theater, film, and TV performer died on January 23 at age 95. Although many younger people know him—if only vaguely—as the guy who won a Tony Award for his stage portrayal of Mark Twain, Holbrook began his movie career in 1966, being cast in Sidney Lumet's The Group. He went on to portray then-unidentified Watergate scandal source “Deep Throat” in All the President’s Men (1976) and appeared in other movies such as Wall Street (1987), The Firm (1993), and Lincoln (2012). On the small screen, Holbrook won parts in the series Coronet Blue, The F.B.I., The Name of the Game, Designing Women (featuring his wife, Dixie Carter), Evening Shade, and The West Wing, and in teleflicks on the order That Certain Summer (1972, written by Richard Levinson and William Link) and Pueblo (1973). He starred in The Senator, a much-lauded but sadly short-lived and sometimes-controversial, 1970-1971 NBC “wheel series” drama—part of the Bold Ones rotation—playing Hays Stowe, a progressive and highly principled member of the U.S. Senate. Holbrook later led the cast of three Perry Mason TV movies (following Raymond Burr’s death in 1993), filling the boots of William “Wild Bill” McKenzie, a hotshot attorney and Utah rancher. One of my fondest memories of this actor had him playing a solely vocal part, his craggy voice narrating the 1997 Ken Burns TV documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. The New York Times says Holbrook died at his home in Beverly Hills, California; he was buried at a cemetery in Tennessee, alongside Dixie Carter, who met her own end a decade ago, in 2010.

• Last August, I mentioned on this page that Paul Green, a self-described “biographer specializing in film and television history,” had let it be known he was entering hospice care. The author of books about Roy Huggins, Pete Duel, Jeffrey Hunter, and others, Green told me in an e-mail message, “I suffer from stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to my bones. I have been under treatment for three years.” Now Ed Robertson, host of the radio talk show TV Confidential, brings the sad news that Green passed away on Sunday, January 17, at age 65. “He was a gifted artist, a skilled biographer, and a good friend,” Robertson wrote on Facebook. “Paul and I last spoke about two months ago, at which time he informed me of his prognosis. He was in good spirits, all things considered, and we had a nice visit. It is hard for me to pick a favorite among his books. We met because of his biography of Pete Duel, did a couple of programs about his book on The Virginian, and had memorable conversations about his biographies of Jennifer Jones, Jeffrey Hunter, and Roy Huggins. He brought all of those figures to life and gave us each an understanding of who they were as people. Rest in peace, Paul … and thank you.”

• Finally, we must say good-bye to television producer and screenwriter Cy Chermak, who apparently perished from natural causes on January 29 in Hawaii. Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1929 as Seymour Albert Chermak, he went on to develop scripts for Beverly Garland’s Decoy, Cheyenne, the 1977 TV movie Murder at the World Series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Additionally, he produced such shows as Ironside, Amy Prentiss, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Barbary Coast, and CHiPS. Chermak was 91.

• Speaking of obits, I tried to do justice to 81-year-old author John Lutz, who breathed his last on January 9. But his friend Francis M. Nevins does a far superior job of recounting Lutz’s illustrious career in this new Mystery*File piece. He also offers this poignant closing:

The last time I saw [Lutz] was in March 2020, shortly before COVID-19 dominated the world. He said nothing, needed a walker to get around, had lost a lot of weight, but he could still function. That soon changed. He deteriorated over the rest of last year and died a little more than a week into this one.

The only other writers with whom I had such a close and rich relationship were Fred Dannay and Ed Hoch, both of them now long dead. Is it any wonder that as the years pass I feel empty and alone more and more often?

• You may not be aware of this, but frequent Rap Sheet contributor also hosts Poets of the Tabloid Murder, a mystery-fiction author interview show heard on the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). That show was off the air for awhile, but it returned to production last August. Since then, Nester has interviewed such authors as J. Todd Scott (Lost River), T. Jefferson Parker (Then She Vanished), S..A. Cosby (Blacktop Wasteland), and most recently, Nick Petrie (The Breaker). I’ve added a link to the index of Nester’s broadcasts to the “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” list in this blog’s right-hand column.

• Promoting his new spy novel, The Mercenary—not to be confused this “orgy of death” Cold War thriller—Paul Vidich submits to an interview with Mystery Tribune, and contributes a piece to CrimeReads about the role imposters play in our literary tradition.

​• Four other CrimeReads posts to read: Vince Keenan’s look back at the never-produced Orson Welles picture The Smiler with a Knife, based on a novel by Nicholas Blake and casting Lucille Ball as its female lead; an interview with David Brawn, the publishing director for the Collins Crime Club, which recently reissued The Conjure-Man Dies, a 1932 work described as “the first detective novel by an African-American author”; Michael Kaufman’s analysis of where police procedurals stand in the age of Black Lives Matter and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump-backing domestic terrorists; and editor in chief Dwyer Murphy’s eulogy for John D. MacDonald’s Point Crisp home in Sarasota, Florida, razed to make room for the sort of “enormous mansions that JDM railed against.”

• And we’ve heard much about small-business closings over these trying last 12 months. However, the British Web site inews.co.uk reports that independent bookshops in the UK have “managed not only to withstand the myriad difficulties thrown at them by the COVID-19 pandemic … but actually increased their numbers.”

(J. Robert Janes photo © 2014 by Ali Karim.)