Origins of Film Noir takes readers on a journey exploring the early steps in the development of an exciting new genre. During the difficult days of the Great Depression of the thirties people found an escape from the realities of their own trials through reading detective fiction in popular magazines such as Black Mask. From there it was just a brief period before two famous detective authors, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, saw their work transported to the large and quickly popular world of film. Hammett's best selling novel The Maltese Falcon launched the new movement of film noir.