Plot summary
On their way back to Britain from India, Holmes and Russell stop at Russell's childhood home in San Francisco. As they approach San Francisco, Russell becomes more and more distracted. Holmes concludes from this, and her recurring dreams of falling objects, a faceless man, and locked rooms, that she is repressing some unpleasant memory. Russell denies this and tries to track down the psychiatrist who helped her recover from the trauma she suffered when she precipitated the car accident that killed her family. On the way, she meets a Chinese man, Long, who was the son of her parents' good friends. Long saves her from a murder attempt before introducing himself and saying that his own parents were killed shortly after her own parents died. When Russell finally tracks down the name of her psychiatrist, she learns that she was murdered after Russell departed for England several years ago.
Holmes determines from the fact that there was a recent break-in at Russell's house, Russell's anxiety and distraction, the murder of the psychiatrist, and the most recent attempt on Russell's life, that there is something serious amiss. He hires Dashiell Hammett to join his investigation. They conclude that Russell was present during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, despite her denial of this fact, and it was this experience that produced the dream about falling objects. He learns from an interview with a survivor of the earthquake that Russell was very frightened by a man with several bandages on his face looking for her father — he had covered up his face because he had been burned while fighting a fire, and this made him appear faceless.
Both Russell and Hammett visit the site of the Russell family car accident. Russell then takes a vacation to her family's summer home with her friends Flo and Donny. During the vacation, she recovers her wits enough to realize that somebody is trying to murder her and all the people that could possibly be connected with the car accident that killed her parents, from Long's parents to her psychiatrist. She visits the garage that collected the remainder of her parents' car and learns that the brake rod was cut and she is not to blame for their deaths; they were murdered.
Russell returns to her city house, fully recovered and determined to find out who was behind all the murders. Using fengshui, which Long's family was very interested in, they dig up the garden and find a box with a confession, written by Russell's father, and several valuable items in it. In the letter, he says that he helped a man get away with murder of a policeman, looting, and arson to cover up the evidence during the 1906 earthquake. The man in question was the one posing as a rescuer with the bandaged face. The letter concludes with the statement that Mr. Russell is going to disclose this information in order to free his conscience, and adds that he warned the person responsible of his intentions. The letter was written only days before the family members' deaths.
Holmes had previously set up Irregulars in the form of street kids to spy on Hammett's house in case of an attempt on Hammett's life. They report on a break-in involving the two suspects, the burnt man and his "sister". They end up on a chase that takes them to Chinatown, where one of Long's friends calls on the crowd to prevent them from getting away. Russell confronts the two before they are arrested, and finally unlocks the last "room" — a memory she had of seeing the man near her parents' car the day they died.
The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask beginning with the September 1929 issue. The story is told entirely in external third-person narrative; there is no description whatsoever of any character's thoughts or feelings, only what they say and do, and how they look. The novel has been adapted several times for the cinema.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
Nick and Nora Charles are fictional characters created by Dashiell Hammett in his novel The Thin Man. The characters were later adapted for film in a series of films between 1934 and 1947; for radio from 1941 to 1950; for television from 1957 through 1959; as a Broadway musical in 1991; and as a stage play in 2009.
Laurie R. King is an American author best known for her detective fiction.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Betty Jean O'Hara was a famed prostitute in Honolulu's "vice district" during World War II.
Red Harvest (1929) is a novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by the Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction, much of which is drawn from his own experiences as an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The plot follows the Op's investigation of several murders amid a labor dispute in a corrupt Montana mining town. Some of the novel was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a 1920 labor dispute in the mining town of Butte, Montana.
Sam Spade is a fictional character and the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. Spade also appeared in four lesser-known short stories by Hammett.
The Continental Op is a fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett. He is a private investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office. The stories are all told in the first person and his name is never given.
Murder by Death is a 1976 American comedy mystery film directed by Robert Moore and written by Neil Simon. The film stars Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, and Estelle Winwood.
Mary Russell is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes mystery series by American author Laurie R. King. She first appears in the novel The Beekeeper's Apprentice.
Satan Met a Lady is a 1936 American detective film directed by William Dieterle and starring Bette Davis and Warren William.
Hammett is a 1982 American neo-noir mystery film directed by Wim Wenders and executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay was written by Ross Thomas and Dennis O'Flaherty, based on the novel of the same name by Joe Gores. It stars Frederic Forrest as detective story writer Dashiell Hammett, who gets caught up in a mystery very much like one of his own stories. Marilu Henner plays Hammett's neighbor, Kit Conger, and Peter Boyle plays Jimmy Ryan, an old friend from Hammett's days as a Pinkerton agent. The film was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
The Maltese Falcon is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film based on the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film stars Ricardo Cortez as private detective Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as femme fatale Ruth Wonderly. The supporting cast features Dudley Digges, Thelma Todd, Walter Long, Una Merkel, and Dwight Frye. Maude Fulton and Brown Holmes wrote the screenplay; one contemporaneous report said that Lucien Hubbard was assisting them.
The Thin Man (1934) is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally published in a condensed version in the December 1933 issue of Redbook. It appeared in book form the following month. A film series followed, featuring the main characters Nick and Nora Charles, and Hammett was hired to provide scripts for the first two.
The Art of Detection is the fifth book in the Kate Martinelli series by Laurie R. King. It is preceded by Night Work. It features elements of the Sherlock Holmes character who appears in King's Mary Russell series.
A Letter of Mary is the third in the Mary Russell mystery series of novels by Laurie R. King. This is the first case that Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes work on together as husband and wife. The story features a cameo by Lord Peter Wimsey.
Mrs. Hudson is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. She is the landlady of 221B Baker Street, the London residence in which Sherlock Holmes lives.
"Nightmare Town" is a short story written by Dashiell Hammett in 1924. It was first published in a December issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly magazine. It became the title story of a 1948 collection of four Hammett short stories published in paperback with illustrations. It appeared again in 1999, the eponymous story of a collection of twenty short stories edited by Kirby McCauley, Martin H Greenberg and Ed Gorman. It was adapted for BBC radio in June 2010 and read by Stuart Milligan.
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