The Pacific coast port city of San Francisco, California provides a distinctively mysterious backdrop in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Unlike many other detective stories that are anchored in well-known metropolises such as Los Angeles or New York City, Hammett opted to place the events of his text in the lesser-known, yet similarly exotic cultural confines of San Francisco. Hammett used his own intricate knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area - coupled with details collected during a stint as a detective for the now defunct Pinkerton Agency - to craft a distinctive brand of detective fiction that thrived on such an original setting (Paul 93). By examining the setting of 1920's San Francisco in The Maltese Falcon, it becomes apparent that one of Hammett's literary strengths was his exceptional ability to intertwine non-fictional places with a fictional plot and characters in order to produce a logical and exceedingly believable detective mystery.

Dashiell Hammett called the San Francisco area home from 1920 until 1936. For a portion of those fourteen years, he shared an apartment on Eddy Street

The use of actual San Francisco street names, hotels, and restaurants in The Maltese Falcon plays an essential role in the development of the story (Freeman 78). Numerous street names including Geary, Market, Sutter, and Bush appear frequently in the text as a frame of reference for the reader. If the reader wished to do so, he or she could actually map Spade's routes around the city as he attempts to solve his case. By using realistic locations and places in the text, Hammett was able to present a cohesive picture of the setting that surrounded the plot (Paul 244). If Hammett was ever unsure about how he wanted to describe some aspect of the setting, he merely had to walk outside and observe the environment around him. Hammett used his own real-life setting in San Francisco as a model for The Maltese Falcon and continued to do so afterwards in his other works of detective fiction

Since the dawn of modern American detective fiction, many mystery writers have chosen metropolitan cities with high incidences of murder and theft as the setting for their stories. When the public is informed about some heinous crime committed in these non-fictional urban settings, it makes the author's fictional setting and plot seem all the more realistic (Baker & Nietzel 15). The plot of The Maltese Falcon would not be nearly as believable if it were set in Omaha, since people do not automatically associate crime with the Nebraska town. Incidentally, several 1920's and 1930's writers became linked to the cities in which their stories were set. For example, Raymond Chandler became synonymous with detective fiction that was based in or near Los Angeles, and Fredric Brown's work was linked to Al Capone's hometown of Chicago (Baker & Nietzel 36). Likewise, Hammett used the city of San Francisco - and all of the vast scenery and culture that it provided - as his own personal writing territory for The Maltese Falcon. Up until the 1920's very few writers had based their text in San Francisco: Thus, Hammett's use of the Bay City as a setting added an original variation to the alread

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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)