The Maltese Falcon Society was founded in San Francisco on May 20, 1981[1] by literary historian and biographer Don Herron[2] and private investigator Jayson Wechter.
[3] The society's first meeting was held at John's Grill,[4] a restaurant where Dashiell Hammett ate and which he featured in The Maltese Falcon.
The speakers at that first meeting were David Fechheimer, a Hammett researcher and private investigator, and E. Hoffmann Price, a pulp fiction author.
[9] The San Francisco chapter meetings heard presentations by mystery novelists Julie Smith, Charles Willeford, Stephen Greenleaf, and Joe Gores.
The San Francisco chapter also staged special events, such as a "shootout" conducted at the 1981 Marin Designers Showcase in Mill Valley, California, which resulted in the police being called.