My favourite detective: Sam Spade, as hard as nails and the smartest guy in the room

Sam Spade was the invention of the great noir crime writer, Dashiell Hammett, who published his first novel in 1929. Spade is often overlooked for the dashing Philip Marlowe, created by the more well-known crime writer, Raymond Chandler, who began publishing soon after Hammett stopped in the late 1930s. This article looks at the rightfully deserved place the character of Sam Spade belongs to in the annuals of crime fiction