A Man Called Spade and other Stories
A Collection of 5 short stories with the famous private detective Sam Spade, the earliest written in 1926, in a
1944 Dell Book edition. One of the cool and collectable mapback editions with a map from Ruth Belew on
the back and with the Cover art possibly made by Otto Storch

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was probably the creator of the Hard-Boiled style of private detective crime fiction.
He had worked as a PD for the Pinkertons before starting a career as an author of crime stories, and his first short
story was published in 1922. The first story about the Operative from the Continental Detective Agency was
published in 1923 and the first short story about the famous Sam Spade in 1926.
Hammett's first novel was Red Harvest (Röd skörd) in 1929, the 2nd The Dain Curse 1929, the 3rd The Maltese
Falcon in 1930 and the 4th in 1932 with The Glass Key. His last novel was The Thin Man in 1934.

The Glass Key was filmed the 2nd time in 1942 with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, The Thin Man (Den gäckande
skuggan) in 1934 with William Powell and Myrna Loy (and their cute dog) in a crime comedy .... i remember
seing this on swedish TV as a kid and i liked it a lot, a classic of feel good cinema.
However, the most famous of the Hammett films was The Maltese Falcon from 1941 with Humphrey Bogart in the
role as private detective Sam Spade .... The Stuff that Dreams are made of ...