Photo: Mathew Peyton / Getty Images Entertainment (2003)
Sample of authors
Davis, Dorothy Salisbury
The American crime writer Dorothy Salisbury Davis was born in Chicago, Illinois, and adopted by an older childless couple, the Salisburys, who ran their own farm in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. She had no idea that she was adopted until she found her birth certificate at the age of 17. It was only when she was well into middle age that she attempted to track down her biological parents and discovered...
Literary figures
Sam Spade
Gender: Male
Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel and a few short stories about the American private detective Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon, however, is a major classic and like some of his short stories it is the precursor of the hardboiled detective story. The cynical, tough and outright rude Spade and his personal habits are so often copied that they have become clichés.