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In fact, it's quite an enjoyable book, and went on to become (eventually) an arguably enjoyable film. Production problems, a screenplay reportedly written by a cast of thousands, and a less-than-clear sense of direction by Wim Wenders, hindered the film, but it's still worth a look. It's fun to watch for "quotes" from other movies and Hammett's own work, not to mention somne intriguing cameos (notably those of crimewriter Ross Thomas and Elisha Cook Jr.), and it's not a bad PI flick, either. Sure, both the book, and the subsequent film deal with an "entirely imaginary story", yes, but there's far more "truth" in them than in the recent disappointing A&E TV biopic Dash and Lilly. By the way, Frederic Forest, who played Hammett in the film, reprised the role several years later, in a scene in Citizen Cohn where Cohn and Senator McCarthy are badgering Hammett to give up some Communist Party names. Hammett replies by quoting Lewis Carroll. It's a short scene, but good. Gores, of course, knows something about real-life San Francisco private eyes who become writers. He's the creator of the DKA series, and a handful of other quality work in the genre. And, of course, Dashiell Hammett was a real guy. * * * * * But Joe Gores isn't the only one to take a stab at fictionalizing Hammett. Just like Raymond Chandler, Hammett has been dragged into all sorts of fictional shenanigans. William Nolan even had a series, appropriately titled The Black Mask Boys, featuring pulp writers Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler and Hammett getting into all kinds of mischief as amateur sleuths. The first book in the series, The Black Mask Murders (1994), appropiately enough featured Hammett, and he appeared in the two subsequent novels as a major supporting player. One of the more entertaining romps featuring the Hammett that might have been is Mike Doogan's 2002 short story, "War Can Be Murder," wherein the no-longer-young "Sam" Hammett stationed in Alaska during World War II, plays amateur sleuth (and shows up drunk at a party, offering a few politically-incorrect -- and still timely -- words on war). For those familiar with Hammett's biography, it's a lot of fun. Certainly, the Mystery Writers of America thought so -- they bestowed the 2002 Robert L. Fish Memorial Award upon Doogan for the story. And Hammett continued to be a prescence in crime fiction. In 2009, Ace Atkins, best known at the time for his series of books about crime-solving blues historian Nick Travers, imagines young Pinkerton agent Dashiell Hammett hired to on behalf on behalf of silent film star “Fatty” Arbuckle, whose been charged with murder, following the unfortunate death of an actress at one of his wild parties. Based on true incidents (Hammett was involved in the case), Devil's Garden is a flawed but intriguing look not just at one of the more overlooked periods of Hammett's life, but also one of the most notorious, star-studded scandals of the twentieth century -- and one of the few Max Allan Collins' Nate Heller seems to have missed. In 2011, Hammett was back, as a major character in Bradley Denton's emotionally stoked "The Adakian Eagle," in the "urban fantasy" anthology Down These Strange Streets. The short story is narrated by a young soldier stationed in the Aleutians who is dispatched, along with Dashiell "Pop" Hammett, the editor of the base newspaper, to investigate the strange mutilation of an eagle on a desolate moutainside. Even if you know nothing about Hammett's life -- but especially if you do -- the ending will rock you. And finally (so far), we have Hammett Unwritten (2013) by Owen Fitzstephem, with notes and illustrations by Gordon McAlpine, which posits that Hammett's last case as a Pinkerton agent involved the "real" Maltese Falcon, and that it was possession of the statuette, which he kept as a memento, that was responsible for his subsequent literary success. When the statuette is lost, Hammett's decades-long writer's block begins, as well as Hammett's life-long search for the missing black bird. SHORT STORIES
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