CORRECTS BOOK TITLE - FILE - Novelist Dashiell Hammett, author of "The Maltese Falcon" appears in New York on Nov. 7, 1947. Hammett’s Sam Spade, will be continued by prize-winning crime writer Max Allan Collins. The publisher Hard Case Crime announced Thursday that Collins’ “The Return of the Maltese Falcon” will be released in January 2026, when the Hammett classic featuring Spade, “The Maltese Falcon,” enters the public domain. (AP Photo/EF, File)