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
The Falcon Takes Over Chandler novel "Farewell, My Lovely", with the Falcon substituted for Chandler's archetypal private eye Philip Marlowe and the setting of New York City replacing Marlowe's Los Angeles beat. The film was the second adaptation of a Marlowe story, after "Time to Kill", released earlier in the same year. That film, also, did not use Marlowe as the main character, changing the name to Michael Shayne. As it played in film theaters, "The Falcon Takes Over" was considered a "co-feature" or the second half of a double bill. Theodore Strauss in his review for "The New York Times", wrote, "For a