Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is more than a mystery: it is a seminal work that defined a genre, a tough, unflinching portrait of a hard-nosed private eye navigating a treacherous landscape, culminating in a shocking cliff-hanger that has left readers dangling for nearly a century.

What happened to the falcon?

The Poltroon Press edition of this classic detective novel supplies the answer with a new coda comprised of two linked short stories by Mark Coggins. Coggins, who is a photographer as well as a crime fiction writer, also contributes twenty-two scene-setting black and white photographs from modern-day San Francisco to illustrate the volume.

Prepare now to enter-or reenter-the world of Samuel Spade. A knight-errant on the fog-shrouded streets of 1920s San Francisco, he isn't afraid to bend a few rules to meet his clients' needs.

But he's never had a client quite like the breathtaking Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a damsel in distress whose story doesn't quite add up.

When Spade's partner, Miles Archer, insists on handling the case himself-and promptly winds up dead-Spade becomes a prime suspect in his murder. Sucked into a whirlpool of deceit and double-cross, he must navigate a precarious path between the police and a shadowy cast of out-of-towners who've come to believe he can deliver a magnificent jeweled falcon from the time of the Crusades.