January 6, 2026, approaches, meaning Return of the Maltese Falcon finally goes on sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the usual suspects. (Hardcover: 
| E-Book: 
)
We are celebrating with a free book giveaway – thanks to the kind folks at Hard Case Crime (“folks” being editor/publisher Charles Ardai), I have secured 20 copies of my Sam Spade sequel for the first twenty among you who contact me (with apologies to Nero Wolfe for using contact as a verb) at macphilms@hotmail.com requesting a copy. I will sign and (if you request it) personalize these copies.
The rules: you must include in your e-mail your snail-mail address (even if you’ve won before); and you agree to write a review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble. Reviews on personal blogs are also encouraged. (If you dislike the book, you are encouraged not to review it!)
If you review for an on-line mystery site and want to review it, let me know and I’ll get you a copy, not from this batch of twenty.
Unfortunately, no Canadian or other foreign entries can be honored. International postage rates are higher than ever (aren’t tariffs wonderful?). I wanted to send a friend in Germany a copy and it would have cost $80.
IMPORTANT: DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR AMAZON REVIEW OF RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON BEFORE PUBLICATION DAY, JANUARY 6. THEY WILL NOT USE IT OTHERWISE!
Those of you who have already pre-ordered, thank you. And anyone who picks this up, thank you, paying customer!
This is an important book for me – both in the creative sense, bringing my love for private eye fiction full circle, and in trying to stay relevant in a publishing landscape where many of my readers are (choke) no longer with us, and lots of my editors have retired. Plus, publishing generally sucks.
I have been lucky so far to stay afloat thanks to the loyal readers who have stuck with me or discovered me recently and liked what they saw. Barb and I are grateful to all of you.
Speaking of Barb, she is just finishing up her draft of Antiques Web for Severn House and I will be starting my draft at the beginning of January.
Thank you all of you again, and let’s have a better 2026. Shouldn’t be hard, but it likely will be.
In the meantime, check out this great review from Kirkus, the third of the three major book review outlets to give a rave or near rave to Return of the Maltese Falcon. This is especially gratifying, since in the past Kirkus has frequently implied that my true calling was my previous job: sacking groceries.
Max Allan Collins
Did you ever imagine that
The Maltese Falcon could spawn a sequel? Well, Collins has, and although it’s no match for Dashiell Hammett, it’s surprisingly successful on its own terms.After all, Hammett’s novel ends a bit up in the air, with (spoiler alert) Brigid O’Shaughnessy on her way to jail for killing Sam Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, but scheming, bloated Casper Gutman’s gunsel Wilmer Cook escaping after the precious falcon behind all the novel’s intrigue is revealed to be a phony. So why shouldn’t Gutman’s daughter, Rhea, call on Spade just a week later, as Christmas 1928 approaches, to hire him to track down the bird that the untrustworthy supplier, Russian general Kemidov, replaced with a fake? Spade agrees, and soon he has a stable of four clients—Rhea, Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan, British Museum curator Steward Blackwood, and Corrine Wonderly, Brigid’s kid sister—each of whom, unknown to the others, has paid him a retainer to locate a treasure none of them intends to share with anyone else. There’ll be more fatalities, of course, including two members of the original cast, before Spade gathers his clients together for a Christmas party at which he stages exactly the sort of denouement Hammett consistently took pains to avoid in all his fiction. 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.
Christmas may be over, but ‘tis still the season (for a few days anyway), so if you haven’t already watched our little micro-budget movie Blue Christmas, there’s still time to view it in a Yuletide context.
We’ve recently been accepted on You Tube, after jumping through a few hoops, but it’s available a bunch of places:
Tubi, Fawesome, or rent/buy it on Amazon Prime Video, with it sometimes appearing on library services like Hoopla. Some of these involve commercials – Tubi, I believe, opens with some ads and then the movie plays without further interruption.
I found the following review most insightful. If you’re a fan of the movie or of my work in general, check this out.
The HBO/Cinemax series Quarry, based of course on my book series, is number 2 on this list of worthwhile shows you may have missed, describing it as having a “beautiful visual style, and a gripping story – Quarry is an underappreciated classic worth discovering.”
I wrote an episode of the series and received a sole screen credit, but actually it was spread across two episodes by another writer who took the other sole credit. Just a Hollywood thing.
I’m proud of the show and, if you like the book series, you will probably like it. It does lack the dry humor of the novels, and moves the action to Memphis (one of the Quarry novels does take place in Memphis, Quarry’s Climax). And the concept of Quarry tracking other hitmen for targeted clients was something set for the second season (for which I wrote an episode and was paid for doing so) that never happened.
My understanding about why that second season did not get a greenlight is that the show runner and star clashed, refusing to work together again. That’s not a fact, just what I heard from insider sources. Again – Hollywood.
The real Quarry is coming from Hard Case Crime in 2026 in Quarry’s Reunion, but that will be late in the year.
2026 is all about Return of the Maltese Falcon.
M.A.C.
Tags: Blue Christmas, Quarry, Quarry TV, Return of the Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade
Hooray for the Falcon news and HOORAY for the glowing Kirkus review !
I’m looking forward to RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON!