Category: Literature

Hack’s favorite novel is Dashiell Hammet’s The Maltese Falcon, which contains a scene in which a thousand dollar bill goes missing, so detective Sam Spade performs a strip search on the femme fatale anti-heroine. The scene was excised from the famous 1941 film version starring Humphrey Bogart (when the notorious Production Code in effect at the time didn’t permit such onscreen shenanigans) but it’s included in the 1931 pre-code adaptation in which the luscious Bebe Daniels is the recipient of the humiliating frisk.

When Hack wrote this rip-off of the Hammet story, he included the pat-down, but he inexplicably made Jonny M. the target of it instead of the female lead (who is physically an exact double for Bebe Daniels). The result is disturbing, to say the least.