The Tour

                             40 Years (1977-2017) and Counting

“Since 1977, Don Herron has slipped on his trenchcoat and snap-brim hat to lead groups on a four-hour, three-mile investigation of Hammett sites…”

— NEW YORK TIMES —

“Theatrical and thoroughly immersed in Hammett arcana.”

— LOS ANGELES TIMES —

“Hammett and the San Francisco of the 1920s come to life again.”

— SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE —

“The group moved like a drunken cat through the streets and back alleys of the Tenderloin. It passed Southeast Asian diners, tawdry hotels, bars without windows, and places where a twenty will buy you more than the weekend’s groceries.”

— THE WALL STREET JOURNAL —

Travel with Don Herron over the fog-shrouded hills stalked by Sam Spade, the Continental Op, and other hardboiled characters created by San Francisco’s most renowned mystery and noir writer. During this walk you’ll see the buildings where Hammett wrote his most famous stories and the majority of locales from his classic novel, The Maltese Falcon.

Shadow Sam Spade in his quest for the fabulous figurine of a mysterious black bird. Prowl the back alleys where the Continental Op, Hammett’s longest-running detective, faced down the opposition over the barrel of his blazing .38. Follow Hammett himself as he works for the Pinkerton Detective Agency on the infamous Fatty Arbuckle case. See the spot where Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, with a smile on his mug and his pistol buttoned away under his overcoat, met swift death in the night-fog.

2023 SCHEDULE: Check the Current Walks page to see what — if anything — is being offered at the moment. Pickings may be slim, since I’ve been leaning more and more into doing groups by appointment.

But the days of leading a group every Sunday over a period of a few months are done. (And for all the people who email to ask how many walks I am leading that same day, I have never scheduled walks for every day of the week — and almost never guided more than one per day.)