Posts Tagged ‘True Noir’

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True Noir Followed by a Slice of Fruitcake – WTF?

Tuesday, March 24th, 2026

I’m not sure what compelled me to do two weeks of lists of “Five Favorites” here. I can say with confidence it was more about me looking back and summing up than trying to sway anybody about those favorites. I do admit to trying to bring new eyes and ears to Bobby Darin and Vanilla Fudge, but otherwise I was just taking stock of what has shaped and is shaping me, even at this late stage of the game.

Yesterday (as I write this) Heath Holland interviewed me about my return in recent years to indie filmmaking. I haven’t seen it, and don’t believe it’s been posted yet; but it felt good. I’ll provide a link here as soon as I can.


Heath Holland

I mention this, first, because I want to recommend Heath’s work on YouTube in general (under his Cereal at Midnight banner). He is one of the best and sanest of the champions of physical media out there right now. He and I have been doing commentaries (about 10 so far I believe) for various Blu-rays and 4K discs).

Also, as many of you know, I have a regular segment on YouTube as part of Robert Meyer Burnett’s show Let’s Get Physical Media, with the great Dieter Bastion. It’s a show that usually runs about two and a half hours, airing live on YouTube on Sunday afternoon (1 pm Central). And of course you can catch it anytime, after it airs, at your convenience. I usually come on about 2 p.m. Central and discuss discs I’ve recently watched, usually noir/mystery-centric movies or at least noir-adjacent. I stay for about an hour. There’s lots of movie talk and news of forthcoming physical media releases. I was a fan before I become, well, a segment.

Rob and Dieter have been great about promoting Death by Fruitcake, though I suspect it is anything but their cup of tea. They have also relentlessly given time to Return of the Maltese Falcon and to the Burnett/Collins collaboration, True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak.

Rob will be coming to the Quad Cities some time in early May (exact date to be determined) for an event at the Putnam Museum in Davenport. (This event was supposed to be in early April but that didn’t work out.) We’ll be showing The Maltese Falcon on their big IMAX screen on the first night, followed with an interview with me about Return of the Maltese Falcon. On the second night we’ll present the opening chapters of True Noir, also in the IMAX theater.


Robert Meyer Burnett salutes True Noir

As I’ve mentioned, True Noir is now in wide distribution at your favorite audio source, with a four-CD set due soon from Skyboat. There’s also a soundtrack of Alex Bornstein’s wonderful score in the works, and I believe the entire audio drama will be available on Blu-ray in 5.1 with the collected chapter-by-chapter videos I made about the history behind this first Heller saga.

Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What have you done for Max Allan Collins lately? I’m listening. I’m waiting.

Joking aside, you’ve done plenty. Many of you have reviewed Return of the Maltese Falcon on Amazon and elsewhere. That’s very helpful. The book is successful enough that serious talk is under way to do two Sam Spade follow-up novels. Barnes & Noble are carrying it widely now, again thanks to your nudging, although they have generally relegated it to the mystery section and not among significant new releases. BAM! has been much better.

Keep those reviews coming. If you’ve read the book, and like it, let Amazon know by way of a review, which can be as long or short as you like. If you didn’t like it, remember – silence is golden.

Death by Fruitcake can use your help, too – we have two lovely reviews at Amazon so far. It’s a little high-priced for a DVD (around $22) but unfortunately I can’t do anything about that. It’s streaming all over the place, but not free yet. That will come sometime next month, I think.

I was amused when Heath spoke of liking Fruitcake but being blindsided by what a different tone it has compared to my other work. (He had just listened to Michael Rosenbaum as Nate Heller in True Noir.) He also was not a fan or even familiar with “cozy” mysteries. But he did claim to have enjoyed our little movie, and particularly singled out Alisabeth Von Presley and Paula Sands for praise (not surprisingly).


Paula Sands and Alisabeth Von Presley in Death by Fruitcake.

And, for those of you who follow – or at least have sampled the Barbara Allan-bylined series my wife Barb and I write together – know, our Antiques/Trash ‘n’ Treasures mysteries are what you might call subversive cozies. They contain at least as much humor as mystery, and our tongues are in cheek throughout.

At 20 books, these novels about Brandy and Vivian Borne are arguably my (our) most successful series. The current one, Antiques Round-up, is a fairly wild ride, I think you’ll find. And we just delivered Antiques Web.

What am I – are we – working on now? Well, I am waiting to hear about the prospective Spade novels and a sequel to another successful property of mine, which puts me in a limbo in which I am not comfortable. Ditto for Barb, as the book we recently sent in is the last on the current contract.

I guess Barb and I are in an uber-Spring Cleaning mode, as we have descended into our basement to thin my book and magazines and DVD collections into something that can reasonably be considered contained. It’s ain’t easy, kids. I am looking at close to sixty years (choke!) of collecting…no, let’s be frank: accumulating…and to give you an idea, we took seven boxes of magazines and books to the Source Bookstore in Davenport last week, and another seven to Half-Price Books in Cedar Rapids yesterday.

And we’ve barely made a dent.

Do not think that our basement will be empty when we are finished. The goal is to turn it from a hoarding nightmare into a curated dream, and it’s going to be a year-long job (in and around the books we both have to write).

Or at least I hope we’ll have books to write. That depends on editors and readers, and obviously that’s where you come in – it’s why I’m after you to write reviews, and why I hope you’ll consider ordering Death by Fruitcake from Amazon (Oldies.com has it, too, a little cheaper but with postage that will sting if you’re used to no postage charges as an Amazon Prime member).

The success or lack of it for Fruitcake will determine whether I can muster my aging body for another run at a micro-budget indie or two. I have a horror film next in mind, and would love to do another Antiques movie, if my cast will come back.

The crazy thing is this: I have three major movie options going right now (Mike Hammer, Eliot Ness and Nolan, with Ms. Tree bubbling), which stand to generate a hell of a lot more income than another homemade micro-budget movie. But here’s how I look at it: I have had probably twenty-plus Hollywood options over the years, and exactly two have come through (Road to Perdition and Quarry). And I don’t seem to be getting any younger. So I just stay at it.

And as long as I am here, and you are here, I will.

M.A.C.

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True Noir Options, Fruitcake for Sale, Sour Grapes Extra

Tuesday, February 24th, 2026

As I put this together, I’m hoping my son Nate can help me share with you several good True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak clips that have appeared here and there.

In the meantime – here, a week after our international distributorship for True Noir kicked in – an amazing revised version of our website, truenoir.co, has gone up, thanks to my pals and accomplices Phil Dingeldein and Mike Bawden. If you have even the slightest interest in my work, you need to click on that link and have a look around. Be sure to click on the photos of our voluminous, world-famous cast and crew, for full-color photos and bios.

You can access the whole damn thing (that is, True Noir: The Assassination of You Know Who) on Audible; if you have a subscription there, you can use a credit and receive our nearly five-hour effort – words, music, sound effects. I must salute another accomplice, the man who put it all together: director/editor Robert Meyer Burnett.

Now, if you’re not an Audible subscriber, your best bet is to go to:
Downpour (THIS IS WHERE YOU CAN BUY THE 4-CD SET as well as find other options)

Other available options are:
Spotify
Apple Books
Google Play Books
Chirp
Libro.fm

Potential Library readers should use Libby (by OverDrive). No link available.

* * *

Rob Merritt and the new DVD starring…Rob Merritt!

The other big M.A.C. release (both came out Feb. 17) is Death By Fruitcake, our little indie film bringing the “Barbara Allan”-bylined Antiques mystery series to life. Again, you can find it here:

AppleTV
YouTube Movies
Google Play
Amazon Digital Buy/Rent
Amazon DVD
Oldies.com

That last one has the DVD at a significantly cheaper price than Amazon, but if you’re a Prime member and get free shipping, Amazon is the better option. Oldies “free shipping” doesn’t kick in till you spend $75.

I haven’t done a giveaway on Death By Fruitcake because I received no comp copies and I have to pay full price per copy to get ‘em. I am a nice, generous and wonderful man to his readers; but not that nice, generous and wonderful.

We don’t have a Blu-ray this time, but the DVD looks fine. We supervised the packaging. Bare bones – no commentary (though I’ve been doing commentaries with Heath Holland on all kinds of movies by other people!); but the disc itself has a terrific fruitcake skull image.

On a related indie front, Mickey Spillane’s Cap City (based on the Spillane/Collins novella, “A Bullet for Satisfaction” in The Last Stand) won Best Scripted Feature at the Star City Film Festival in Des Moines. I co-scripted and co-produced with director David Wexler. Much more on that soon.


Red carpet at the Star City Film Festival (Barb and me in back)

Also, I’m directing a table read of my horror script, House of Blood, for a prospective indie movie based on my radio script for Fangoria’s Dreadtime Stories. It’s being presented at Muscatine (Iowa) Community College in the same Black Box space where we mounted Blue Christmas. The cast is mostly actors who were either in Blue Christmas or Death By Fruitcake or both. It’s at 7 on both Friday the 27th and Saturday the 28th of February. If you’re in the area, come. Otherwise, stay home and wait for us to turn it into a movie. (I’m talking to you, Mike and Jackie White!)

* * *

My birthday is coming in one week. I will be 78. I do not encourage gifts, but if you want to say something nice about me, write me at macphilms@hotmail.com, and I’ll share it here next week, on the big day. Of course, every day is a big day at my age.

Along those lines, I want to share a particularly nice missive I received from a reader. But, first, I will bitch about something. Anyone who invites nice comments about himself on his birthday obviously has a huge ego, but likely also a thin skin. As Bill Murray says in Groundhog Day: “Me…me…I am really close on this one.”

So I am going to carp about a certain kind of comment that appears on Amazon from readers who profess to be “really big fans” and then advise other readers not to buy this particular Collins book, because it misses the mark.

Okay, I am sure some of my work misses the mark (like this update, for example). One of those negative reviews appeared recently among dozens of overwhelmingly positive reader reactions to Return of the Maltese Falcon. It stung, and I stupidly replied (privately to the person) because I am a weak human being in this particular area.

I think it’s because there’s something personal about it. I generally shrug off bad reviews (and I’ve had my share) and have only very, very, very rarely responded to a pro reviewer. I enjoy good reviews but try not to take them to heart, because (I guess) if I take the good ones seriously, I have to take the bad ones too; good reviews are mostly just good press, as I see it. And some of the mixed or negative ones do point out flaws that I can work on.

But attacks from self-professed fans are different. They say, from one fan to the other, “Don’t read this one. He’s let us down.” That, my friends, is personal.

And it’s unkind. A really big fan would keep it to himself. A reader who says, “Sometimes Collins is good, sometimes, he’s bad, and this is a bad one” strikes me as fair. Or “I don’t know what the hell anybody sees in this hack Collins” – you know, that’s probably an opinion worth sharing.

The promise I will make to you is this: I will never phone it in, and never have. I’m in business to entertain, not just to be in business. But of course this is a business, and I don’t love it when someone who regularly does business with me discourages others from doing so. (Did I use the word “business” enough in that paragraph?)

I do enjoy it when readers step up to say, “I enjoy what you do,” and sometimes they have even been inspired (poor fools!) to go into fiction writing themselves. And now I will share a missive with you from David K.

M.A.C.

Hi Max:
You have been kind enough over the years to have emailed back and forth from time to time about the Nate Heller books which I started reading back in 1980’s along with your westerns, the Galena books and your non-fiction along with Quarry.

I read your newsletter weekly and saw where you asked for any pictures from bookstores featuring Return of the Maltese Falcon.

This picture is from a Barnes and Noble in suburban Milwaukee as they had one copy on hand. I took the liberty of taking it from the other books, moving a book by Michael Connelly and placing yours in a more prominent display. I am hoping that just having one copy is indicative of sales of multiple copies at the store.

Thanks for all the hours of reading enjoyment you have provided me over the years. Being now in my seventies, one joy of aging is I can go back and read the first Heller’s like The Million Dollar Wound or Neon Mirage and they are like new books all over again.

I am looking forward to reading this book and the final Heller when it comes out. And also planning on ordering True Noir but need one of my kids to help download it to my phone. A technical wizard I am not.

Anyway sir, thanks again for all of the work in your career. There will always be the critics but until they write a book or books and have had the success you have had, they really aren’t worth paying much attention to in my opinion.

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A Heaping Helping of True Noir and a Slice of Fruitcake

Tuesday, February 17th, 2026

Today – if you’re reading this when it was first posted – is a big one for us.

The fully immersive audio drama, True Noir: The Assassination of Mayor Cermak – all four and a half hours of it – becomes widely available for the first time. Skyboat is the publisher and Blackstone Audio is the distributor.

The three formats are:

Digital Download
CD (I believe that’s on 4 CDs)
MP3CD, the entire program is on a single disc.

The best place to order True Noir – particularly the physical media version – is via Blackstone’s sales site, Downpour.com, where all three formats are available, in fact the only place you can access all three.

If you are an Audible member, or just like to do your business there, go directly to Audible or to Amazon.

[And here’s B&N/Nook! — Nate]

Anyone who likes my work will, in my less than humble opinion, be delighted hearing this. Director Robert Meyer Burnett, working with casting guru Christine Sheaks (Boogie Nights), assembled an unparalleled company of actors headed up by Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) as Nathan Heller. Mike Bawden and my longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein were the behind-the-scenes producers.

Among the notable actors (take a deep breath) are David Strathairn as Frank Nitti, Jeffrey Combs as Mayor Anton Cermak, Anthony LaPaglia as Al Capone, Katee Sackhoff as Janey, Bill Mumy as Dr. Ronga and Patton Oswalt as Dipper Cooney. That’s just the beginning: the great Bill Smitrovich (Lt. Cramer on Nero Wolfe!) and Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy on The Sopranos) are just two more top names in a cast including Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show), PJ Byrne (The Boys), and Adam Arkin (A Serious Man).

With a great full score by Alexander Bornstein and incredible sound design supervised by director/editor/co-producer Rob Burnett, it’s truly a movie for the ears. That I was able to write the script myself – adapting the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective – made this a dream-come-true project.

And Rob did a terrific job with the actors, and included me in the process of recording them in LA (I attended most of the sessions by Zoom from here in Iowa). I can truly say that this has been one of the best creative experiences of my career.

Here is a taste:

And please check out this terrific review of True Noir from Ed Catto.

* * *

By sheer coincidence – and I am not kidding – another big M.A.C. project goes into international distribution on the very same day as True Noir. The movie I wrote and directed, based on the Antiques cozy mystery series that Barb and I write as “Barbara Allan,” also is now available on DVD (from Amazon) and on various VOD services:

Here is where Death by Fruitcake can be accessed:

AppleTV
YouTube Movies
Google Play
Amazon Buy/Rent
Amazon DVD

Check out our page at our distributor, DeskPop Entertainment, right here (it includes the trailer).

The film was shot here in Muscatine, Iowa – specifically at New Era Lutheran Church, adjacent to which is a theater where most of our production was staged. It’s near scenic Wild Cat Den, seen in the climax of Mommy’s Day; but we were very much operating on the church and theater. It was an intense but fun two-week shoot, plus the usual second unit stuff, including some Wild Cat Den shots and scenes at Meg’s Vintage Collectibles, which became the Trash ‘n’ Treasures antiques shop from the Barbara Allan books.

We’re very proud of it, and Barb was involved every step of the way, a producer supervising the production. Is it a big-budget production? No, not unless you compare it to my previous film, Blue Christmas. Like that film, we are a micro-budget production dependent upon a good script and a solid cast.

We couldn’t have asked for a better Vivian Borne than Paula Sands, legendary Midwestern, Emmy-winning broadcaster; or a better Brandy Borne, played by Midwest super-songstress Alisabeth Von Presley. Brandy’s police chief boy friend, is portrayed by Rob Merritt, who looks suspiciously like the lead actor who played private eye Richard Stone in Blue Christmas. Their supporting cast includes many familiar faces from that previous production.

I am pleased to have Death by Fruitcake exist as a DVD release – we had several distributors interested in the film, but Twin Engines (actually DeskPop, a subsidiary) included a DVD release. And that sealed the deal for me.

* * *

Here’s a fun piece from the always great site the Stiletto Gumshoe, discussing why some readers won’t be able to see Sam Spade as anything but Humphrey Bogart when reading The Maltese Falcon…or Return of the Maltese Falcon.


A Barnes and Noble sighting!
* * *

Here’s a recent appearance on WQAD-TV channel 8 in Moline, Illinois. The interviewer, Shelby Kluver, is a delight. It’s about (among other things) the Star City Film Festival, in which a movie I wrote, Mickey Spillane’s Cap City, was entered. More about that next week!

M.A.C.

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Many Happy Returns

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026

The Return of the Maltese Falcon continues to dominate around here. We continue to get lovely notices, and this one from The Strand is a doozy:

We encourage sending pics of Return from your phones spotted out in the wild of Return on display. Barnes & Noble has improved on the title, but reports still come in that the book is not anywhere in certain individual stores. If you are a brave, hearty soul, go to the Help Counter and ask if it’s in stock, and if it isn’t, whether more are on the way. (You don’t have to buy the book at B & N to do this.)


Source: theeversocharming

Also, reviews posted at Amazon are highly helpful, however short, though we’ve had some really smart, well-written long ones, as well. Worth doing at Barnes & Noble dot com, too – considerably fewer reviews have been posted there, but still a fair number.

John-Jr-Jackson, an Imagination Connoisseur, wrote Patton Oswalt an Instagram recommendation:

Hey man , I know you like classic films and reading books , so I wanted to recommend a book to you if that is ok. Return of The Maltese Falcon by Max Allan Collins. It’s a great book and pure noir goodness. Thought I would throw that on to your radar.

That’s very cool, as Patton is not only a friend (well, friendly acquaintance), but did me the favor of joining the all-star cast of True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak.

By the way, a big, big, big date for me is coming up:

FEBRUARY 17, 2026

Why is that date important? It’s the official release date of two major projects of mine.

First – and more exciting news about this will follow in the next few Updates – True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, the 4 ½ full, full-cast adaptation written by me (from the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective), will be officially released worldwide. You’ll find it downloadable at Audible and elsewhere, and will be able to order the Skyboat Media 4-CD set (yay physical media!).

February 17 is also the release date of the Antiques/Trash ‘n’ Treasures movie, Death by Fruitcake, based on the novels by Barbara Allan (wife Barb and me), adapted from a novella of ours and co-produced by Barb. The great cast is topped by Emmy winner Paula Sands, Midwest superstar Alisabeth Von Presley, and my Blue Christmas lead, Rob Merritt. Chad T. Bishop shot and edited our modestly budgeted film and I directed it.

Pre-order the DVD here (no blu-ray).

One of the best reviews and interviews, relating to Return of the Maltese Falcon, appears at J. Kingston Pierce’s indispensable Rap Sheet. I’m taking the liberty of reprinting the review portion this week.

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.

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.

NEXT WEEK: I will post J. Kingston’s Pierce’s interview with me about Return of the Maltese Falcon. Jeff has done some of the very best interviews with me ever done.

Speaking of interviews, my pal Heath Holland (with whom I partner on blu-ray commentaries) spoke with me about Return of the Maltese Falcon here.

M.A.C.

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