There are only four Sam Spade stories. The first is probably his most famous novel: The Maltese Falcon. If there were more, we’d fill more books with Sam.

Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon, is a great read for anyone who wants to be encompassed by a book and left wanting more after the conclusion of the story.

Hammett enlisted in the United States Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps. He was afflicted during that time with the Spanish flu and later contracted tuberculosis.

Dashiell Hammett is often credited with being the inventor of hardboiled fiction, a genre known for being unsentimental and brutally honest in its style. A combination of urban realism and wry humor, the hardboiled writing style is as tough as the characters that populate the novels.

The Maltese Falcon, made in 1941, is a classic movie which has been held by many to be one of the best films of all time. Based on the book by Dashiell Hammett, the movie is set in San Francisco in the early 1940s. Watching The Maltese Falcon is a reminder that the classics are classics for a reason.

Of the 10, it was Hammett and Chandler whose work would become the most enduring. But there was no way of knowing that at the time — while both authors contributed to Black Mask, the two were at very different places in their careers. Hammett was the more successful, by far.

Private Samuel D. In the age of McCarthyism, Hammett was swept up in the Red Scare and was imprisoned for refusing to name the sources of bail funds for communists. Later in 1953, he was blacklisted after testifying to a Senate Committee and his writings were branded “subversive”.

In the age of McCarthyism, Hammett was swept up in the Red Scare and was imprisoned for refusing to name the sources of bail funds for communists. Later in 1953, he was blacklisted after testifying to a Senate Committee and his writings were branded “subversive”.

In the film, the falcon – made in 1539 as a gift from the Knights Templar of Malta to Charles V – is really made of gold and is encrusted with jewels, but has been covered in black enamel to disguise its value. It’s the black, enamelled version that we see in the opening credits and later on.

Lost to history for decades, it resurfaced in the 1980s in the hands of a Beverly Hills oral surgeon, and beginning in 1991 traveled the world as part of a Warner Bros. retrospective, with stops at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and elsewhere.