Posts Tagged ‘Return of the Maltese Falcon’

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Nate Heller, Mike Hammer and a Friend of Theirs Passes

Tuesday, July 7th, 2026

If you’re a fan of my Nathan Heller books – or just a dedicated reader of mine – and you have not yet ordered True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, well…you are missing out. Director Robert Meyer Burnett directs an amazingly stellar cast with full sound effects and a terrific score by Alexander Bornstein, all in service of a script by me from my novel True Detective. It’s just under five hours.

I think this is the best dramatic adaptation of my work, ever. You can get the download, the Audio CD (four CD’s) and an MP3 CD right here.

The portrayal of Nate Heller by Michael Rosenbaum is key to the enterprise. He totally “gets” Nate Heller. If you don’t recognize the name, here’s a pic he sent me the other day after I sent him the physical media version (the 4-CD set).

Michael Rosenbaum, True Noir

Michael is probably best-known for his iconic portrayal of Lex Luthor on the hit CW series Smallville, but also his and his voice work as The Flash in the DC Animated Universe. Beyond his numerous acting roles, as in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, Michael is also the host and creator of the celebrity interview show Inside of You – one of the most entertaining podcasts around with a star-studded array of guests. He also happens to be a genuinely nice guy.

Here’s some of the rest of the cast, by the way:
David Strathairn; Anthony LaPaglia; Jeffrey Combs; Thomas Howell; Adam Arkin; Katee Sackhoff; Vincent Pastore; William Sadler; Jesse Spencer; P.J. Byrne; Saverio Guerra; Louis Lombardi; Bill Smitrovich; Patton Oswalt; Curtis Armstrong; Barry Bostwick; Bill Mumy; Renée Taylor, Don McManus; Devon Conrad; and Richard Portnow. And that’s not everybody.

What are you waiting for?

* * *

Last week I discussed, somewhat off the top of my head, my favorite portrayals of Mike Hammer on TV and in the movies. I made an egregious omission: Armand Assante in the 1982 version of I, the Jury. I am a big fan of Assante’s Mike Hammer and, in general, of the film itself, which is violent and sexy in a way no previous version had attempted (or any since, for that matter). Hammer’s relationship with Velda (Laurene Landon, whose blondeness we’ll forgive) is spot on, and the classic ending (and last line) is restored.

The movie got lost in the shuffle because the production company behind it went bankrupt. Terry Beatty and I drove from Muscatine, Iowa, to Chicago, Illinois to see it – driving in and back the same day/night. A six-hour round trip, not factoring in bathroom breaks and food. Later, to get the 1982 I, the Jury on physical media, I paid over a hundred bucks (a kajillion dollars in today’s money) for a Japanese laser disc (I owned the VHS, too, and of course the later blu-ray.) I wrote rather glowingly about it in Spillane on Film and Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction.

I, The Jury (1982)

So why, other than feeble-minded old age, could I forget about it last week?

It was easy. I, the Jury (1982) was a (at the time) modern take on Mike Hammer and his debut novel. It holds a unique place in the Hammer filmography. The earlier TV and movie renditions were fifties and early sixties animals. When Hammer was done on TV in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he was done in a contemporary fashion but as a man out of time – as if Mike Hammer had jumped into a time machine around 1952 and emerged in that later era, where he was presented as a glorious dinosaur. (It’s not unlike what I did with Hammer’s protype Mike Danger, having him wake up in a politically correct future in the comic book Mickey and I developed for Big Entertainment.)

How to do Hammer on film – whether to make him a version of Mike in modern day (whatever modern day that happens to be) or to approach him in period, for example adapting one of the early novels with a ‘50s setting – is a conundrum Hollywood is still facing. Much discussion among movie folk has gone on about how to present Hammer today, including the notion of doing him in his original time frame. I see some real advantages to doing that, but usually the discussion comes around to the need (for all sorts of reasons) to do him modern-day. The Keach version managed to split the difference, in a way – but that was in the ‘80s; now the man-out-of-time approach would have a 1940s/1950s character operating over 70 years later.

A new Hammer movie is still percolating and the most recent script I saw worked pretty well, but the political mood of the country makes the character problematic. Even back in the day critics saw Hammer (wrongly) as a fascistic figure; today, if he mirrored (for example) Donald Trump’s world view, that would put him on the side of ICE agents. Yet Mickey’s Mike Hammer has friends of all sorts of ethnicities.

Hammer’s vigilante tendencies don’t transfer well to today. So it’s at best tricky, and at worst impossible, to do the urban avenger in any way that isn’t offensive to somebody. Ironically, Spillane was never really political with Hammer. Take One Lonely Night: the bad guys are “Commies,” but the top Commie turned out to be the Senator Joe McCarthy figure! Mickey always went for the surprise.

Yes, Mickey leaned into Ayn Rand territory in his Tiger Mann books; but political themes were rare in the Hammer novels.

I would vote for a period Hammer, but it will almost certainly not happen.

Anyway, Assante’s Hammer was a glorious success (artistically speaking) of bringing him effectively into the early 1980s. But, due in part to the meager release the movie got, that version didn’t get anywhere near the pop cultural purchase of Stacy Keach’s Mike Hammer.

Let’s talk, for a moment, about lists of favorites – whether it’s candy bars or movies. There is a difference between “best” and “favorite.” My favorite Hammer (not counting Mickey) is Darren McGavin. Why? Largely because he was my introduction to the character. Also, that TV show was set in – produced in! – the 1950s. Mike Hammer’s era.

Who was the best Hammer? Mickey wouldn’t agree, but Assante would be a contender on the big screen – he was the most authentic in terms of sexuality and violence and a genuinely conveyed thirst for vengeance.

An argument could be made for Biff Elliott because, again, he was operating in the 1950s and was a hot-headed roughneck right out of the original novels.

But the best Mike Hammer? Even Mickey came to think Ralph Meeker was the best movie Hammer, despite the film turning its source on its head. Meeker was a terrific actor in the Method mode whose best role was Hammer, and he inhabited the best Hammer movie, which is even fairly faithful to the novel. No movie, to date, has captured Spillane better, despite its agenda to criticize Mickey.

As far as TV goes, I would say “best” has to be shared by Keach and McGavin.

But my favorite? I told you last week.

* * *

My pal and sometime collaborator Matt Clemens interviewed me on his podcast recently about Return of the Maltese Falcon. Here it is.

And here Road to Perdition makes a list of the six “darkest comic book masterpieces.”

* * *

I lost a colleague last week. You meet all sorts of people in publishing, and many of them are worth knowing, but few have been as delightful to deal with as Titan’s publicist, Katharine Carroll.

Only the most financially successful writers – at least those of my generation and the one or two after it – could afford to hire publicists. So a writer is dependent on the publisher’s publicist, and this is very much a hit-and-miss affair. Frequently only the most successful writers get the kind of attention from a publisher’s publicist that proves fruitful.

Katharine was an exception. She was always open to considering my wildest suggestions. For example, she got us enormous attention for Mike Hammer’s 75th anniversary and Mickey Spillane’s 100th birthday. She would kick ideas around with me and then follow through. I had many wonderful, positive conversations with her. We were just starting work on Quarry’s 50th anniversary.

But that’s business. In the lonely writing game, the friendly voice on a telephone and the lighting-fast e-mails in reply to whatever screwy notion I might have, these are things that can’t be measured.

I’ll share a little about her below. But it’s not enough.

Katharine Trowbridge
Katharine Trowbridge
U.S. Publicist for Titan Publishing, Dies at 68
Jim Milliot/Jul 06, 2026

Katharine Trowbridge, who oversaw the U.K.-based Titan Publishing Group’s U.S. publicity effort for 18 years, died on June 28. She was 68.

Known professionally as Katharine T. Carroll, Trowbridge began her publicity career with Time Inc. in 1980, spending a decade working across campaigns with Time, Life, People, and Entertainment Weekly. In 1990, she launched her own publicity firm, KTCommunications, where she worked with a range of magazines, authors, and publishing companies.

She joined Titan in 2008 and is credited by the company owners with helping to grow the publisher in the U.S. She was particularly instrumental in helping to revive the respected Hard Case Crime imprint founded by Dorchester Publishing and acquired by Titan in 2011. A native New Yorker, Trowbridge was a regular at New York Comic Con, where she connected U.S. journalists and booksellers with Titan titles such as Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis, Titan’s first-ever U.S. original fiction title to hit the New York Times bestseller list.

“We are devastated by the loss of Katharine,” said Titan Entertainment Group co-owners Nick Landau and Vivian Cheung in a statement. “She had the warmest of personalities and cared deeply for all her authors as well as her colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. Her contribution to Titan enabled us to grow far faster in the U.S. than we ever thought possible. We will miss her dearly.”

Trowbridge is survived by her three children and her mother.

M.A.C.

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Sam Spade and Me

Tuesday, June 9th, 2026

This week, or at the latest next, I will likely complete Prey for the Maltese Falcon, my follow-up to Return of the Maltese Falcon. It takes place in 1939 and posits what Sam Spade might have been up to around ten years later.

It’s an honor, and frankly a relief, to have had Return so warmly received. My wife Barb warned me I was really sticking my neck out this time – who was I to be writing a sequel to what many (including me) consider the best the best tough mystery novel ever written – the book that can be viewed as the paradigm for the entire sub-genre of the private eye novel?

I tried to answer that by respecting Dashiell Hammett and his creation, and honoring him with something more than just a pastiche. Readers coming to the book will always have to judge that for themselves.

A perhaps more interesting question is: why had I been thinking about doing a sequel to The Maltese Falcon for something like twenty years? When the novel was decades away from going into the public domain, making any such effort even possible? Prior to the novel gaining public domain status, I thought it highly unlikely the Hammett estate would come to me for the job.

Sam Spade got on my little-kid radar by way of advertisements in comic-strip form that appeared in Sunday newspapers and occasionally comic books. My discovering those strips was in the mid-1950s and even then those ads/comics were old news – literally, old newspapers and comic books that had somehow gotten into my grubby little hands (and psyche).

It was common for advertisements in the Sunday funnies to disguise themselves as just another comic strip, or a page of comics in a comic. Sometimes such strips invented their own recurring characters, the better to fool readers into thinking they weren’t reading an ad at all (particularly kids). Sometimes advertisers went so far as to license existing comics characters to hawk their goods – famously, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner (for Cream of Wheat) and Fearless Fosdick (for Wildroot Cream-Oil) appeared in mini-comics in the pages of slick magazines like Look and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as comic books and Sunday comics sections.

Like Fosdick, Sam Spade appeared on behalf of Wild Root Cream-Oil (a hair tonic) in a strip called The Adventures of Sam Spade, tying in with a popular radio show of that name starring Howard Duff. The strip took up a lot of real estate in the funnies – a half- or even full-page – and each was a short mystery, solved usually in a way that (you’re ahead of me) had to do with Wild Root Cream-Oil.

They were lively strips, many of them beautifully drawn by Golden Age comics great, Lou Fine, a Will Eisner crony. Over a three-year period, at least 25 strips were published. This link will take you to some nice examples.

Because of these strips, I knew about the Sam Spade radio show, but missed out on those, because The Adventures of Sam Spade aired before my time, from 1946 to 1951 (on NBC). The series was enormously popular and made a star out of Howard Duff, who graduated to movies (and later TV) but never was as big a star as he’d been in radio. Another popular radio series, Suspense, did two episodes with Duff as Spade, one of which (“The Kandy Tooth Caper”) was a 60-minute sequel to The Maltese Falcon.


Howard Duff as Sam Spade

The series was a spoofy take on the genre not at all in keeping with Hammett’s original approach, but its success having almost as much to do with establishing Sam Spade as the iconic private eye character (maybe the ironic private eye character) as Bogart’s Spade had with the John Huston classic film.

The series might have lasted longer, and perhaps made the transition to TV, but the anti-Communist witch-hunt led to creator Dashiell Hammett, known for his association with left-wing causes, becoming a ripe target for Senator Joe McCarthy. Hammett, who had served his country in two wars, even did hard time when he refused to name names in the HUAC hearings. McCarthy’s odious assistant Roy Cohn even tried to have Hammett’s five novels banned from U.S. Information Service (USIS) overseas libraries. Cohn failed when Hammett fan, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, intervened.

In the witch hunt’s wake, the radio show was re-tooled as Charlie Wild, Private Detective (1951), with a new detective taking Spade’s place, although secretary Effie Perine stayed on board; the radio series didn’t last long, although it did make a shaky transition to TV (1950-1952). Effie came along (the setting now New York) played by young Iowa gal Cloris Leachman (later picked up by Mike Hammer at the start of the film Kiss Me Deadly).

I’m not sure when it was that I first saw the Bogart/Huston Maltese Falcon. I vaguely remember faking a stomach ache so I could stay home from church and see it on the Sunday Morning Movie. I loved it, of course. The likes of the Saint and Sherlock Holmes, two of my previous obsessions, couldn’t hold a candle to Bogie’s Sam.

Finally I caught up with the original Sam Spade in the Permabooks 35-cent edition of The Maltese Falcon with a great cover by Harry Bennett (a very ‘60s rendition of Brigid, Wilmer and Caspar Gutman). And at some point I discovered a Dell paperback of A Man Called Spade, with the three Hammett-published Spade short stories.

In my teens I was inhaling all the Hammett I could find, usually in ill-lit old secondhand bookstores; same with Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane – the Big Three, as far as I was concerned (and still am).

Periodically I discovered other Spade oddities, like the 1946 David McKay “Feature Book” adaptation of The Maltese Falcon in comic-book form, with funky art by Rodlow Willard; and one or two of the record albums of the several Falcon radio adaptations starring Bogart and other original cast members.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I have never watched an episode of the AMC series, Monsieur Spade, not wanting to be influenced; and I have not revisited Spade & Archer by the late Joe Gores. I frankly recall not being taken with it, and thinking I’d like to have a crack at the character myself someday (though I am otherwise a Gores fan).

It’s clear that Hammett did something very special in The Maltese Falcon, and a lot of it was Sam Spade, who despite appearing in one novel remains for many of us the quintessential private eye. The imprint of the author and his character on me was such that I could become intrigued with them both just by reading a comic strip advertising hair oil tonic.

* * *

Guess what movie is considered one of the best Irish mob movies ever?

M.A.C.

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A Unique Take on Return of the Maltese Falcon

Tuesday, May 5th, 2026

I had a lovely and really interesting e-mail about Return of the Maltese Falcon I’d like to share with you…and the e-mail writer has given me permission to do so, including her review of the novel.

Dear Max Allan Collins,

You have earned yourself a new fan. I loved Return of the Maltese Falcon.

Several years ago, I convinced my local Big Read committee to adopt The Maltese Falcon for their community wide project. I was a teacher, and I wanted my students to love all genres of classic lit as much as I do. The closest thing we had to The Maltese Falcon in our curriculum was Edgar Allan Poe short stories. Those are great, but I wanted them to read something more modern, too.

My students studied the novel and then hosted a successful community event where they shared their Maltese Falcon-related research to the public in interactive presentations. That project continues to be one of my most favorite teaching moments.

Thank you for revisiting this fun story. I recently reviewed it on my Substack page. I hope you have time to check it out. It’s linked here.

Thanks again for all your stories.

Oh, one more thing. I watched your YouTube video and picked up several writing tips. You are an inspiration.

Deborah Linn McNemee
KeepingClassics.com

Now here is Deborah’s really unique take on my novel.

It’s 2026 and Sam Spade Needs Sensitivity Training
How Max Allan Collins Nails a Sexist Detective
in Return of the Maltese Falcon
Deborah Linn McNemee
Apr 27, 2026

Sam Spade is a sexist pig.

We know this, right? He’s been a sexist pig since 1939. A good mystery is timeless, but we all can agree a man like Spade should leave his sexist behavior in the past.

Or maybe not because earlier this year, MWA Grand Master Max Allan Collins brought him back, problematic attitude and all, in the much anticipated Return of the Maltese Falcon. Collins has earned the title of MWA Grandmaster from a lifetime of great writing, such as Road to Perdition, and his work on well-known series like Dick Tracy, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and even the Batman comic book.

Sam Spade was originally brought to literary life by Dashell Hammett in the 1930 classic detective novel, The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade became the template for all the cynical, hard-nosed detectives that came after him. As problematic as these womanizing anti-heroes are, the biggest problem of all is that we like them, especially Sam Spade.

I’ll give you a moment to gasp and fan your face. You know it’s true. Readers, and probably the general public, love a bad good guy, especially when paired with a femme fatale and a wisecracking secretary who calls him out.

But–and it’s a big but–today’s culture will cancel writers for creating these characters just to make ourselves feel righteous.

If I weren’t already salivating at the thought of a sequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, I would have picked up Collins’ book simply out of cancel culture curiosity. How would Collins handle writing a womanizing, sexist character like Sam Spade and a setting like 1928 San Francisco for someone reading him in 2026?

I am an author of retellings, so I know the dilemma. In my current work in progress, I’m navigating one of Mark Twain’s characters, Joe. You know him with the proper adjective Injun placed in front. The retelling needs the character and his storyline. It definitely does not need the moniker. It’s not a name I would ever consider using. It would never pop into my author brain, but it’s in the original. It must be dealt with. It’s delicate work to honor the character and the writing and not insult my readers or myself.

So how does Collins deal with one hundred year old norms? Brilliantly. He nails the sexist detective. And he does it with the help of a woman.

Return of the Maltese Falcon starts two weeks after The Maltese Falcon ends. Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Joe Cairo are languishing in jail for murder, double-crossing, fraud, and a myriad of other shady behaviors. Sam Spade, with his blonde Satan-esque face, is seated at his desk, considering a Christmas tree standing where his former partner’s chair used to be. It was erected by Effie Perrine, his secretary, who enters on cue with her “thin tan woolen dress” clinging to her as her heels clack on the linoleum floor.

We’re barely off page one and the only femme who’s not fatale is already having her way with Sam Spade. He’s not crazy about the holiday decor, but, in some ways, he’s crazy about Effie Perrine, so the tree stays. He knows this and doesn’t fight it as lights and tinsel and ornaments show up throughout the book.

Collins doubles down on Perrine’s power by giving her the last dig in this opening repartee. Perrine introduces Spade to a new client, Miss Smith, saying, “‘You’ll like her…She’s female and young.’”

Okay, so we like Effie Perrine. She is spunky and smart and takes Spade’s machismo in stride. But what about Spade? How does Collins nail him? And why do we like it that he does?

Writers of retellings have the benefit of ready made descriptions. In a Cereal at Midnight YouTube interview, Collins explains that even though Sam Spade has made appearances in short stories and movie adaptations, none of those likenesses could be represented in The Return of the Maltese Falcon because those works aren’t in the public domain. So the blonde hair, the V-shaped facial features, and yellow-grey eyes all come from the original novel. Hammett describes Spade as looking “rather pleasantly like a blond satan”.

This blond Satan idea is the seed that grows into our bad good guy for whom we can’t help cheering. Traditionally, Satan is a red dude with black skin or red horns where hair should be. We don’t think of him as blonde. We certainly don’t think of him as pleasant. But these are Hammett’s words that Collins runs with. It’s as if Spade is the middle ground embodiment of the little angel on one shoulder and the little devil on the other.

That combination continues as Spade smirks and smiles and calls his secretary and every other babe in the story honey or sweetheart or rattle-brained angel. In the original, a frustrated Spade rubs his face into Effie Perrine’s hip for comfort and in the same conversation discusses how he won’t marry his dead partner’s wife just because he was hooking up with her before the poor son-of-a-gun died. Somehow, we don’t hate him for it. We scowl with Effie Perrine as Spade then walks out the door to visit Miss Wonderly for what will become more than strictly a business call, but we don’t hate him.

Throughout both novels, we watch with voyeuristic delight as Spade plays every girl he calls on. Most of them are much younger, but it still doesn’t seem to upset us. Even Collins’ 2026 audience won’t protest too much. Maybe that’s because those honey-sweetheart-angels answer their hotel room doors still damp from a shower, barely covered with thin, see-through negligees and look up at him with doughy eyes and pouting lips. They flaunt their feigned vulnerability because they are playing him right back.

The truth is that Hammett’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Collins’ Rhea Gutman and Corrine Wonderly don’t only bring the game to the party, they write the rules, too.

Before you come at me with a lecture on it’s always wrong for older, wiser men to take advantage of younger women, let me concur. It’s wrong. Always. In real life.

Fiction is another world. What we abhor in real life, we often excuse in fiction. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but swallow it we must because Sam Spade is not the only devil getting away with it. Think of James Bond. Think of Indiana Jones when he walks into Marion Ravenwood’s pub to be welcomed with a punch to the face. She adds a certain desperation to her voice. “I was a child,” she says, “I was in love.” He responds with a barely considered, “You knew what you were doing,” and she drops the subject. By the end of the scene, she’s partnering up with him, and by the end of the movie, they’re in love again.

And the crowd goes wild.

Collins is a bit smarter. In that same Cereal at Midnight interview, Collins makes the statement to never write down to your reader. Always assume they are smarter than you. He does not assume the reader will so easily forget and forgive Spade’s escapades, so he brings on women who deserve comeuppance way more than Marion Ravenwood ever does.

Collins also says that the mystery of his novel is not the Maltese Falcon. The mystery is Sam Spade, himself. Who is Sam Spade, really, and what’s he gonna do?

Even if the statue was Hammett’s MacGuffin first, and Spade was his mystery, Collins enacts the concept perfectly. In The Return of the Maltese Falcon, we also have the return of Sam Spade’s libido. He seduces not one, but two young women. Just like in The Maltese Falcon, the women and the reader think maybe he’s gone soft-hearted. Maybe he’s finally met the dame to crack his gumshoe code.

And who knows, maybe Sam Spade isn’t even sure he hasn’t it. In The Maltese Falcon Returns, there’s a point when Effie Perrine watches one of those young ladies walk away and shudders. “‘I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to help you after all, as close as she was to you.’”

“‘She was,’ Spade admit[s]. ‘Too close’”

The point is that Sam Spade does have a code. It might not work for everyone, but it works for him. He doesn’t carry a gun in case he’s tempted to use it. He basically tells it straight. He keeps his word. And he likes women. He especially likes women who think they can pull one over on him, but he never likes them well enough to let them. Smart ones like Effie Perrine who tell it straight, too…well, he more than likes them. He respects them.

And maybe that’s why we like him.

Ultimately, Sam Spade doesn’t get a pass without the women in his world. We don’t mind him blowing off Iva Archer because she’s awful. The femme fatales with all their aliases and alliances are even worse. Their codes make his code seem darn near gallant.

There is one woman, though, who is everyone’s saving grace, Effie Perrine. She’s so sharp, so witty, and so good that if she can see something redeemable in Sam Spade, the sexist pig, we can forgive ourselves for seeing it, too.

* * *

Barb and I have been slowed down these past three weeks by bronchitis. We initially thought we had a reaction to working in the dust and detritus encountered while getting our basement back in shape – the book area, what has been the band room since we moved in and now is more a rec room. We worked hard for days and did not wear masks, so we figured that was the problem.

But we gave what we had to Nate and his family up the street, so if we were contagious, it wasn’t the basement. Barb is about two days behind me, but she’s had it even worse. We both made Emergency Room and Urgent Care visits, and I had an unrelated episode repeating some of the crazy verbal difficulties I experienced back when I had my zany hospital stay (in which I hallucinated I was solving a murder).

We are both doing much better, but we tire easily. It seems bronchitis has a bad habit of holding on.

In the meantime, I’ve started writing the new Sam Spade novel and that seems to be the best medicine.

Speaking of which, here’s some nice Spade coverage from Jeff Pierce at Rap Sheet.

M.A.C.

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Sam Spade News & A Fruitcake Near-Rave

Tuesday, April 28th, 2026

I’m pleased to announce I’ve signed with Hard Case Crime to do two more Sam Spade novels.

Launching a new Spade series wasn’t my intention in writing Return of the Maltese Falcon. I merely wanted to be out there first with a sequel to the classic original, now that it was in the public domain, and was presumptuous enough to think I could get it right.

As I’ve mentioned here, when I finished writing the book, and was pleased with it, my wife Barb warned me to brace myself – she said, Not everyone would like me appointing myself to a task that some might think ought never have been attempted. My thinking was, Somebody’s going to do this, and it might as well be me.

And I was surprised and pleased that the reactions were overwhelmingly favorable, generating some of my best reviews ever. A few naysayers weighed in, though were very much in the minority. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t feel vindicated, I felt relieved.

Only when I saw how well Return of the Maltese Falcon was doing did I begin thinking about writing more Sam Spade. Spade is a character about whom Hammett might well have written another dozen or two novels, like Gardner with Perry Mason, Christie with Hercule Poirot or Rex Stout with Nero Wolfe. And of course Hammett, before turning his back on mystery writing, had written three Spade short stories, plus there’d been the popular Spade radio show with Howard Duff.

But what came to my mind was offering my publisher a trilogy, the first of which would be the already existing Return. I found it interesting to suggest two more Spade novels, each separated by ten years or so – to see what Spade was up to in the war years and then the McCarthy-era ‘50s (which obviously have resonance with Hammett’s life).

I wrote a fairly lengthy proposal and Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai, with support from parent company Titan’s Nick and Vivian Landau and my editor Andrew Sumner, responded favorably. I am now about to begin work on Prey for the Maltese Falcon, set in 1939.

In some ways it’s more challenging than Return, which gave me the luxury of working within the parameters of the original novel – its characters, its locations, its themes. Now Spade is ten years older, and the case I’ve constructed takes him all sorts of places that the original novel and my sequel didn’t.

Wish me luck.

* * *

The UK’s Guardian has an excellent essay on the resurgence of interest in the private eye. It includes a nice reference to Return and me.

* * *

I was surprised and pleased to discover that the Overly Honest Reviews site has posted a terrific Death by Fruitcake review that I’ve been granted permission to share with you.

RAVING REVIEW: One of the best types of mysteries doesn’t pretend to be bigger than it is. DEATH BY FRUITCAKE leans into its small-town setting, its contained stage environment, and its personality-driven storytelling without trying to inflate the stakes beyond what the story can support. That restraint ends up being one of its biggest advantages. It knows the scale it’s operating within and, instead of stretching, digs inward into character, tone, and timing.

The setup is simple in the best way. A dress rehearsal collapses into chaos when a notoriously difficult actress drops dead mid-performance, and suddenly everyone in the room becomes a suspect. That kind of confined, single-location mystery has been done countless times, but what makes this one click is the attention it pays to the personalities circling the event. This isn’t about elaborate plotting or intricate twists stacked on top of each other. It’s about letting the audience sit in a room full of people who all have a reason to hate the victim and watching the tension build from there.

Paula Sands carries much of the story as Vivian, and what stands out isn’t just her presence but the way the performance embraces a slightly heightened delivery without tipping into parody. There’s a stiffness to her line reading at times, but instead of breaking the illusion, it almost feeds into the character. Vivian feels like someone who sees herself as more composed and authoritative than she actually is, and that disconnect becomes part of the charm. It’s not polished conventionally, but it fits the world the film builds.

Alisabeth Von Presley brings a different kind of portrayal as Brandy, and the contrast between the two performances becomes one of the film’s strengths. Where Vivian leans toward control and presentation, Brandy feels more fluid, more aware of the absurdity around her. The moments where she interacts directly with the camera could have come off as distracting. They’re used sparingly enough that they add personality instead of pulling you out of the story. It gives the film an edge, a reminder that it’s in on its own tone without constantly pointing it out.

The supporting cast fills out the ensemble, keeping the suspect pool engaging. No one is pushed into satire, but everyone is just exaggerated enough to feel distinct. That balance is important in a story like this. If the characters blend into one another, the mystery loses its shape. Here, each interaction carries just enough tension or humor to keep things moving, even when the narrative slows.

The investigation expands in a way that feels intentionally relaxed, but there are stretches where it could have used a sharper sense of escalation. Conversations feel a bit repetitive at times, suspicions shift without always adding new information, and the momentum dips as a result. It never stalls completely, but there’s a version of this that trims some of that repetition and lands with a bit more impact.

There’s a lightness to the humor that doesn’t undercut the mystery, and a sense of familiarity that works in its favor rather than against it. It feels like a story that understands its audience, especially those drawn to mysteries where the intrigue matters but the experience is just as much about spending time with the characters. The jokes land more often than not, and when they don’t, they still feel in line with the world the film has created.

The single-location setting becomes a strength rather than a constraint, forcing the film to rely on blocking, performance, and dialogue rather than on visuals. There’s a stage-like quality to everything, which makes sense given the setting, and instead of fighting that, the film leans into it.

What ultimately holds everything together is the film’s understanding of what kind of mystery it wants to be. It’s not chasing complexity for its own sake, and it’s not trying to reinvent the genre. Instead, it focuses on delivering a contained, character-driven story with enough intrigue to keep you guessing and enough personality to keep you invested.

There’s also an underlying appreciation for the setting itself. The small-town dynamics, the overlapping relationships, the way grudges and histories linger just beneath the surface, all of that feeds into the mystery without needing to be spelled out. It gives the film a sense of place that adds texture without complicating the narrative.

DEATH BY FRUITCAKE doesn’t aim for perfection. Its appeal comes from how comfortably it settles into its identity. The imperfections are part of the experience, but they don’t define it. What sticks is the chemistry between its leads, the playful tone, and the steady commitment to telling a story that fits its scale. It’s the kind of film that understands exactly what it’s offering, and more importantly, what it isn’t. And in a genre that often overreaches or overcomplicates itself, that clarity goes a long way.

Please visit https://linktr.ee/overlyhonestr for more reviews.

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If you haven’t read Return of the Maltese Falcon yet, please do. And if you watch Death by Fruitcake on Prime or Roku or Apple TV, please leave a thumbs up if you’ve enjoyed it. And if you order the DVD from Amazon, a favorable review there would also be helpful.

Finally, just a reminder that True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak is out as a 4-CD set now, and can be ordered here for only $23.37 (on sale from its usual $35.95) [Also in a single-disc MP3-CD for $19.47 or digital download for a mere $12.97! – Nate] It’s a full-cast star-studded nearly five-hour audio drama written by me from the first Nate Heller novel, True Detective, and directed by my pal Robert Meyer Burnett.

M.A.C.

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