The Maltese Falcon

Hammett worked the case out on a real city grid. Sam Spade's office looks down Sutter Street; his partner is shot in Burritt Alley, a real dead-end off Bush Street that now carries a plaque; he eats chops at John's Grill on Ellis Street, which still keeps a Falcon room upstairs; and the black bird itself comes ashore off a burning ship at the waterfront. The pursuit of the jewelled statuette runs a tight circuit of downtown San Francisco.

Sam Spade

Sam Spade's office, Sutter Street

Chapter 1

The story opens in the office of Spade and Archer, where a woman calling herself Miss Wonderly hires the partners to follow a man. That night Miles Archer is dead and the woman, really Brigid O'Shaughnessy, is at the centre of everything. Spade runs the whole case out of these two rooms above Sutter Street.

Chapter 1

inferred Spade's office is on Sutter Street near the Financial District; readers have long identified the Hunter-Dulin Building at 111 Sutter Street as the model. Sited on that block of Sutter.

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