891 Post Street #401, San Francisco, CA is billed as the home of Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade. Hammett lived in the building during the period he wrote his first three novels and he put Spade in the same building in The Maltese Falcon. With a close reading of the Falcon text, and a comparison of the other apartments in the building, Hammett scholars have determined that #401 is the most likely to be Spade’s and Hammett’s, although there are no records of the particular apartment in which Hammett lived. As part of the building dedication as a literary landmark, I had the opportunity to tour #401 and meet Hammett’s only living daughter, Jo Hammett. Also in attendance were Julie Rivett, his granddaughter, and Richard Layman, his biographer and editor of both the recent anthology of Hammett letters and the memoir Jo published about her father. Don Herron, leader of … Continue reading 891 Post Street