Fictional sleuth Sam Spade will be back on the job in upcoming novel by Max Allan Collins

NEW YORK (AP) — The story of one of the great fictional sleuths, Dashiell 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. “The Maltese Falcon,” published in 1930 and known to movie fans for the 1941 adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart, is widely regarded as a model for the hard-boiled detective novel.

“It has been an inspiration to authors and filmmakers, actors and illustrators and musicians — and to me, for the entire 50-plus years I’ve been a novelist," Collins said in a statement. "Not that writing about the world Hammett created, and those immortal, sometimes immoral characters isn’t challenging — Hammett’s best mystery also happens to be one of the greatest American novels, period.”

When copyright protection ends for a book, anyone is free to use the characters and story line. After F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby” entered the public domain, in 2021, new creations included a Tony-winning musical of the same name and a prequel novel, “Nick,” by Michael Farris Smith.

According to Hard Case Crime, Collins’ new book will bring back Spade and Joel Cairo among other Hammett characters, and “a mysterious new femme fatale.” Collins, whose “Road to Perdition” was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, has a long history of working with famous literary detectives. He took over the Dick Tracy comic strip in the late 1970s after creator Chester Gould retired, and he was later authorized to continue Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series.

“I’m something of an old hand at walking in the shoes of the giants who came before, though I never claim to filling them,” Collins told The Associated Press.

Various authorized Spade projects have been released, including a 2009 prequel, Joe Gores' “Spade & Archer,” a novel about Spade and his professional partner, Miles Archer. Spade was featured this year in an AMC miniseries, “Monsieur Spade,” starring Clive Owen in a sequel that finds the detective retired and living in the South of France.

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)

BRAUNSCHWEIG, Germany (AP) — A German court on Tuesday acquitted a man who is also under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann in a trial on charges of unrelated sexual offenses.

The Braunschweig state court acquitted the 47-year-old German national, who has been identified by local media as Christian Brueckner, of two counts of rape and two of sexual abuse.

However, Brueckner will remain in prison another year because he is still serving a seven-year sentence for rape in a different case, German news agency dpa reported.

Brueckner had been on trial since February over offenses he is alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Defense lawyers had pointed to what they labeled a lack of evidence and witnesses who weren’t credible, and suggested he might not have been charged if he hadn’t also been a suspect in the McCann case.

Prosecutors had argued he should be given a 15-year prison sentence and kept in preventive detention once he has served it.

The verdict can be appealed, dpa reported.

Brueckner has not been charged in the McCann case, in which he is under investigation on suspicion of murder. He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2019 by the Braunschweig court for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal in 2005.

The Braunschweig state court has jurisdiction because Brueckner had his last German residence in that city in Lower Saxony.

Christian Brueckner, center, stands in the courtroom at Braunschweig District Court before the start of the trial, in Brunswick, Germany, Tuesday Oct. 8, 2024. (Michael Matthey/dpa via AP)