Spade & Archer — Joe Gores

A wonderfully dark, pitch-perfect noir prequel to The Maltese Falcon, featuring Dashiell Hammett's beloved detective Sam Spade.

It's 1921 -- seven years before Sam Spade will solve the famous case of the Maltese Falcon. He's just set up his own agency in San Francisco and he gets off to a quick start, working cases (he doesn't do domestic) and hiring a bright young secretary named Effie Perrine. When he's retained by a prominent San Francisco banker to find his missing son, Spade gets the break he's been looking for. He spends the next few years dealing with booze runners, waterfront thugs, gold smugglers, and bumbling cops. He brings in Miles Archer as a partner to help bolster the agency, even though Archer stole his girl while he was fighting in the war. All along, Spade will tangle with an enigmatic villain who holds a long-standing grudge against him. And, of course, he'll fall in love -- though it won't turn out for the best. It never does with dames.