Some of you may have seen this elsewhere on Facebook, but this is exciting news I’m glad to share. My long intention to write a sequel to The Maltese Falcon, which I consider to be the greatest private eye novel ever written (and the one establishing all of the conventions of the genre), has become a reality. Read about it below.
NEW YORK (AP) — The story of one of the great fictional sleuths, Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, will be continued by prize-winning crime writer Max Allan Collins.
The publisher Hard Case Crime announced Thursday that Collins’ “The Return of the Maltese Falcon” will be released in January 2026, when the Hammett classic featuring Spade, “The Maltese Falcon,” enters the public domain. “The Maltese Falcon,” published in 1930 and known to movie fans for the 1941 adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart, is widely regarded as a model for the hard-boiled detective novel.
“It has been an inspiration to authors and filmmakers, actors and illustrators and musicians — and to me, for the entire 50-plus years I’ve been a novelist,” Collins said in a statement. “Not that writing about the world Hammett created, and those immortal, sometimes immoral characters isn’t challenging — Hammett’s best mystery also happens to be one of the greatest American novels, period.”
When copyright protection ends for a book, anyone is free to use the characters and story line. After F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” entered the public domain, in 2021, new creations included a Tony-winning musical of the same name and a prequel novel, “Nick,” by Michael Farris Smith.
According to Hard Case Crime, Collins’ new book will bring back Spade and Joel Cairo among other Hammett characters, and “a mysterious new femme fatale.” Collins, whose “Road to Perdition” was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, has a long history of working with famous literary detectives. He took over the Dick Tracy comic strip in the late 1970s after creator Chester Gould retired, and he was later authorized to continue Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series.
“I’m something of an old hand at walking in the shoes of the giants who came before, though I never claim to filling them,” Collins told The Associated Press.
Various authorized Spade projects have been released, including a 2009 prequel, Joe Gores’ “Spade & Archer,” a novel about Spade and his professional partner, Miles Archer. Spade was featured this year in an AMC miniseries, “Monsieur Spade,” starring Clive Owen in a sequel that finds the detective retired and living in the South of France.
The coverage of this announced Maltese Falcon sequel has attracted attention to me and my work more extensively than anything else in my memory, including Road to Perdition.
The other really important thing this week is the impending end of the Kickstarter campaign for True Noir, which is my adaptation of my Best Novel Shamus award-winning True Detective as a ten-part audio drama directed by Robert Meyer Burnett. If you’ve sampled this update/blog lately, you know that we have an amazing cast.
Big news is this: Michael Rosenbaum (of Smallville and Guardians of the Galaxy fame) has been cast as Nathan Heller. He’s been recording the role already and is fantastic.
Time is running out – three (3) days left to help back this project. If you’re any kind of fan of mine, you won’t want to miss it.
Finally, with the exception of a few Second Unit shots, we have completed filming of Death by Fruitcake. Specifically, we shot the beginning and ending of the film, at Meg’s Vintage Collective here in Muscatine. Chad Bishop and I are hard at work (and it’s going well and fast) in the editing suite.
We had a wrap party of sorts at Boonie’s in Muscatine, where a sandwich called the Max Collins Turkey Burger is on the menu. Appears I have arrived…from the kitchen, anyway.
Alisabeth Von Presley, Barb Collins,, M.A.C., Paula Sands.
Alisabeth, Meg McCarthy of Meg’s Vintage Collective, Paula.
M.A.C. directs Paula and Alisabeth, Chad Bishop shoots.
M.A.C.
