Maltese Falcon Society Don Herron and private investigator Jayson Wechter. The society's first meeting was held at John's Grill, a restaurant where Dashiell Hammett ate and which he featured in "The Maltese Falcon". The speakers at that first meeting were David Fechheimer, a Hammett researcher and private investigator, and E. Hoffmann Price, a pulp fiction author. The society opened chapters in New York and Japan. By 1982, the society had 110 members in San Francisco, 55 in Japan, and 50 in New York. As its official toast, the society adopted the one used by Sam Spade in Chapter 2 of "The Maltese Falcon":
Maltese literature published in 1842, followed by "Ħrejjef bil-Malti" "(Legends in Maltese)" and "Ħrejjef u Ċajt bil-Malti" "(Legends and Jokes in Maltese)" in 1861 and 1863 respectively. The same author published the first history book in the Maltese language entitled "Storja ta’ Malta Miktuba għall-Poplu" "(The People's History of Malta)" in 1862. 1863 saw the publication of the first novel in Maltese, "Elvira Jew Imħabba ta’ Tirann" "(Elvira, or the Love of a Tyrant)" by the Neapolitan author, Giuseppe Folliero de Luna. Anton Manwel Caruana's novel "Ineż Farruġ" (1889), the first Maltese novel, was modelled on traditional Italian historical novels, such as