Fictional sleuth Sam Spade will be back on the job in upcoming novel by Max Allan Collins

AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The story of one of the great fictional sleuths, Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, will be continued by prize-winning crime writer Max Allan Collins. The publisher Hard Case Crime announced Thursday that Collins’ “The Return of the Maltese Falcon” will be released in January 2026, when the Hammett classic featuring Spade, “The Maltese Falcon,” enters the public domain. “The Maltese Falcon,” published in 1930 and known to movie fans for the 1941 adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart, is widely regarded as a model for the hard-boiled detective novel. When copyright protection ends for a book, anyone is free to use the characters and story line.