Sam Spade Sam Spade Sam Spade is a fictional private detective and the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, "The Maltese Falcon". Spade also appeared in four lesser-known short stories by Hammett. "The Maltese Falcon", first published as a serial in the pulp magazine "Black Mask", is the only full-length novel in which Spade appears. The character, however, is widely cited as a crystallizing figure in the development of hard-boiled private detective fiction—Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Spade. Spade was a departure from Hammett's nameless and less-than-glamorous detective, The Continental Op. Spade combined several features of previous
Wings of the Falcon Wings of the Falcon Wings of the Falcon is a thriller, historical romance novel by Barbara Michaels published originally in 1977. The novel tells the story of Francesca who becomes entangled with the mysterious "Il Falcone" in a political plot in midst of Italian Revolution of 1860. Set during Italian Risorgimento of 1860, Francesca Fairbourn arrives in Italy after she becomes an orphan to live with her mother's family. Her aristocratic Italian mother and English father had eloped which resulted in her getting disowned by her family. Francesca's mother died during her birth which left Francesca's father to raise her