Maltese Falcon (Crime Masterworks 01)
by Dashiell Hammett
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dashiell HammettEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Import
Published: 2002-03-21
ISBN: 0752847643
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Orion Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Maltese Falcon (Crime Masterworks 01)
Book Review: Entertaining, but showing its age
Summary: 5 Stars
Dashiell Hammett's _The Maltese Falcon_ is classic noir: the hard-nosed detective with his own code of ethics, a variety of bad-guys and of course, a woman in distress, the original femme fatale. These elements of the book I enjoyed, even if I struggled with not hearing Bogart, Lorre and Greenstreet in my head reading dialogue. But oh, what dialogue! Terse, concise, snappy dialogue that one associates with the genre.
The story itself was a bit convoluted, which I enjoyed. Sam Spade, the detective hired to recover the Maltese Falcon rarely gets a straight answer, and Hammett is stingy with clues to help the reader along. Instead, I found myself simply hanging on, trying to piece together who did what to whom and who to trust - a similar situation Spade finds himself in. Apparently this isn't to every reader's taste - I thought it worked well and moved the plot along at a rapid pace.
The story does show its age. Not only through the ubiquitous cigarettes Spade (and others) burn through and the copious amount of alcohol consumed, but especially in the way in which Spade treats and reacts to women - truly the 1930s were a time of "men's men" and clearly a full generation before second wave feminism. Taken at face value as a product of its time, however, to edit this out would be to rob the story (and characters) of its flavour.
I pride myself at being able to piece together a mystery - or at the very least have some sort of a handle on it. Not so here - reading Hammett was similar to being tumbled around by a wave - you have no sense of direction, you feel helpless in its grip, and you are running out of oxygen - the best you can do is continue to hold your breath and wait for the wave to break. Likewise Hammett kept me holding my breath and waiting for the final "who dunnit" until literally the last page.
While I can't say I will rush to read more by him, I was certainly impressed with his storytelling. Recommended.
Summary of Maltese Falcon (Crime Masterworks 01)
THE MALTESE FALCON (1930) set the standard by which the private eye genre is judged. Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammett's Sam Spade novels (including The Dain Curse and The Glass Key), Spade is tough enough to bluff the toughest thugs and hold off the police, risking his reputation when a beautiful woman begs for his help, while knowing that betrayal may deal him a new hand in the next moment.
Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he can't provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spade's solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed.
Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the movie, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman "Angel" and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guy's perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If you're riveted by Chinatown or wonder where Robert B. Parker's Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master. --Barbara Schlieper
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