Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco: A Unique Setting in the Changing World of Early 20th Century Detective Fiction The Pacific coast port city of San Francisco, California provides a distinctively mysterious backdrop in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Unlike many other detective stories that are anchored in well-known metropolises such as Los Angeles or New York City, Hammett opted to place the events of his text in the lesser-known, yet similarly exotic cultural confines …showed first 75 words of 1352 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1352 total…Works Cited Baker, Robert and Nietzel, Michael T. Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Press, 1985. Dumenil, Lynn. Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920’s. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. Freeman, Don. “Sam Spade’s San Francisco.” Saturday Evening Post. 264(1992): 78-82. Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Paul, Robert S. Whatever Happened to Sherlock Holmes: Detective Fiction, Popular Theology, and Society. Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.