Humphrey Bogart (center) as detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), directed by John Huston. This movie was adapted from Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name, first published in 1929 and an exemplar of hard-boiled fiction.
Sam Spade, fictional character, the quintessential hard-boiled private detective, the protagonist of a novel (The Maltese Falcon, 1930) and several short stories by Dashiell Hammett.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.