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Jun 05, 2011

Stephen rated it:

Look out folks…here comes GREATNESS…

“When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it”

GIFSoup

Sam Spade (played by the legendary Humphrey Bogart) bitch-slapping the manhood out of Joel Cairo (played by Peter Lorre)….and telling him to shut up and take it!! Do I really need to continue the review after that? That is perfection. However, for those tough sells I will continue with my “Why is this book Awesome” thesis.

First, this story IS NOIR. Now there are More...

26 comments like (71 people liked it)

Jan 08, 2009

Werner rated it:

C. S. Lewis once observed that you shouldn't review individual books or stories of a general type that you dislike, because your basic distaste for the genre is apt to blind you to the relative merits of how well the author handles the individual features of his/her work, and how it stacks up against other works of the same sort. When it comes to the whole noir school of detective fiction, that's probably advice I should heed; based both on the little of it that I've read and what I've read abo More...

3 comments like (13 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Marvin rated it:

I had one minor annoyance in reading this novel. I have seen the movie and I simply cannot get the voices of the actors out of my mind, especially those of Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Humphrey Bogart. It doesn't help that the dialogue of the film is almost totally out of the book. In spite of that, The Maltese Falcon is a hard-boiled delight from beginning to end. It doesn't matter that all the characters are louses, including the charismatic but hardened Sam Spade. It reeks of grittine More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2011

Henry rated it:

Sam Spade, a San Francisco private eye ,is having a good day.Miss Wonderly , later Leblanc, and still later Brigid O'Shaughnessy,(What's in a name, a rose by any other name would "smells" as sweet) comes into his office.So she lies a little, who doesn't!More important ,she gives Sam and his disliked partner Miles Archer, $200 for a job.Miss Won...Leb... O'Shaughnessy, tells a dubious story of a runaway younger sister,accompanied by the mysterious Floyd Thursby.Effie Perine his secre More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 11, 2009

Logan rated it:

How does one even begin to review a book enshrouded in so much history, both cinematic and literary, as The Maltese Falcon? At the beginning, natch! This is a story that nearly everyone is familiar with, if only in a passing way. Bogart and Peter Lorre's characters are nearly permanently imprinted in our cultural consciousness.

Fortunately we're talking about books, not films, and all respect to Humphrey Bogart but Hammett's Sam Spade is an oaf. A lumbering buffoon of a detectiv More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2010

Madeline rated it:

So, a dame walks into a private detective's office...stop me if you've heard this one before.

Let's be honest, you probably have. But luckily this is no ordinary dame. And the office belongs to no ordinary detective. They are Miss Wonderly (not her only name, by the way) and Sam Spade, the mold by which all hard-boiled fast-talking slang-laden detective stories are made. The Maltese Falcon chronicles their shared adventures chasing a valuable, bejeweled falcon statuette that's been s More...

5 comments like (9 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2009

R. rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

8 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 01, 2008

John rated it:

Some library site I visited was celebrating The Maltese Falcon as not only a great detective novel, but a great book. I wholeheartedly agree. It took me two nights of reading to get through it, and I loved it more than a movie -- and maybe even a good NBA game.

I'd seen the movie, so I did picture Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade early in the book, but the rest of the characters were described so well by Dashiell Hammett. Each scene you could feel the late night tension of the situations More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2009

Jim rated it:

I've read this & "The Thin Man" before, but not for many years, so no rating yet. I'm due to re-read it for a book group soon. Probably more fair to rate it then as the book & the movie have melded in my head. I remember liking both quite a bit, but it says something that I haven't re-read the book.
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Jan09, I'm reading it again with an entirely new appreciation of it. The story line was great. It's a mystery with a tough PI in it. He's a tough, but flawed man, w More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 27, 2011

Simon rated it:

Not only my first novel by Dashiel Hammet but probably the first straight crime novel I've ever read too. I may have seen the film many years ago but couldn't really remember anything about it if I had.

Sam Spade is drawn into a mystery when he's hired by a client but is invariably kept in the dark by all the principle characters involved who all suspect that he knows more than he does. Spade needs to get wise, work out what's going on and who he can trust, if anyone.

I got More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 15, 2011

Nikki rated it:

I don't know why I avoided reading Dashiell Hammett. I knew he was an influence on Raymond Chandler, whose work I love, but I only had the vaguest idea about what The Maltese Falcon was about. Turns out, it's not that different to Raymond Chandler's work, and Sam Spade is in the same mould as Philip Marlowe (well, the other way round, technically). It's the same sort of world, the same sort of morals, and though I think Raymond Chandler's writing was a lot more sharp and clear, a lot more new, D More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 13, 2011

Eddie rated it:

So, according to a lot of the reviews here on goodreads this is a classic that most of the literary world has heard of, huh? Well, I haven't. Not until I browsing my local library looking for an audio-book to listen to and I stumbled upon this gem. I read the back cover and was highly interested in wanting to pop it into my CD player in my vehicle and get to listening to it. I usually like audio-books that have more than one reader and also instead of reading the book word-for-word, they actuall More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 13, 2011

Harmonybites rated it:

As soon as I finished this, I looked up "Sam Spade," the detective protagonist of this novel, on the internet to find out if he was in any other novels by Hammett, and was disappointed to find out the answer was "no." (Although he appears in an authorized prequel by Gores, Spade and Archer, and 3 short stories--I may look those up.)

Hammett and Chandler are often spoken as together forming classic noir, and I read that Chandler's Philip Marlowe was inspired by Sam S More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Nicholas rated it:

Hmmmm. Well, I give it credit for what it was. The twists and the turns were fun to run behind and you never did know what was coming next. So it was, at the least, enjoyable. Unfortunately, there is the rest of what the book is.

Spade, for example, is an asshole. There is no part of him that is anything but. He sleeps with married women, whores himself around, and in general acts like a prick to everyone he comes in contact with, even a detective friend of his. It seems silly that h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Adam rated it:

Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is probably the first great hard-boiled P.I. novel. It is not the first detective novel, and Hammett's protagonist, Sam Spade, has his literary progenitors (e.g., C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Nick Carter, Hercule Poirot), but the "hard-boiled P.I." formula that became so popular in the '30s and '40s (and remains popular today) is perfectly realized in this novel.

Originally serialized in five parts in Black Mask magazine from Sept More...

10 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2010

Sarah rated it:

While I do not agree that this is "one of the best crime novels ever written," I did find it an enjoyable read. The main problem, in my opinion, was that the story suffered from being exceedingly convoluted, making it hard to follow who was the good guy and who was the bad guy and who was doing what for which reason most of the time. It was also let down by the flat prose style, which often became jarring through the overuse of too-similar sentence structures and a decided lack of flow More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2011

Sammi rated it:

To love a book, I'm firmly convinced, you have to love its main character. And Samuel Spade is a main character it's just too easy to love. The initial description showed nothing but promise--not everyone can look "rather pleasantly like a blond satan." From there it only got better, his cold-hearted detective demeanor fascinating for a girl who hasn't read a lot of detective books. The way he handles everything the world has to throw at him is brilliant. Women fall at his feet, men li More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 26, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

This was a fun little bit of action. The most appealing thing about this book is the glimpse of life in San Francisco eighty years ago. Hammett was very skillful in his descriptions of clothing, accessories, and interior decor, as well as the sartorial affectations of each character. My how things have changed.
I don't know about anyone else, but I found this story rather comedic. A bunch of incompetent ne'er-do-wells chasing each other all over town and every once in awhile somebody More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 21, 2009

Gayle rated it:

I had always thought of The Maltese Falcon as a movie starring Humphrey Bogart, and so it is, but the movie was preceded by the book, and both are classics of their genre. Though I haven't seen the movie (yet), I have not escaped the gazillion spoofs and cultural references, and so reading the book was a unique experience. Sam Spade is described thoroughly on the first page of the book, and so I have a vivid mental picture, but as Sam Spade plies his craft in the dark streets of San Francisco, I More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2009

Carrie rated it:

Oh boy! Am I hard-boiled now or what? This was a perfect book to pick as my new commuting book, because I had jury duty today, and what better company for a stressful day filled with annoying bureaucracy than Sam Spade and his tough-talking fast-thinking ways? I’m not sure whether I have read the book before, or whether I have just seen the movie, but either way I enjoyed it immensely.

The plot doesn’t make too much sense – lots of double crossing and shooting and such, and I didn’t r More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 26, 2011

Sonia added it

The movie is famous. I watched it years ago when it was on TV, but truthfully, I don’t remember it very well. Just the basic plot. So when I decided to read the book version, a few things surprised me.

The Maltese Falcon is classic noir. It came out in 1930 as a novel and before that it was a serialized novel in some magazine (I think). The story is so famous, I am thinking it invented the lying femme fatal come to hire the PI cliché.

I think I was expecting something faste More...

0 comments like

Nov 24, 2011

Ryan rated it:

Dashiell Hammet’s forays into writing were often serialized in pulp magazines. With the likes of stories such as The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key, Hammet appeared to have a pulse on the modern detective story. Hammet had a variety of careers throughout his life: writer, Pinkerton operative, World War I ambulance driver, and member of the American Communist Party. However, his life as a private eye is what inspired his signature detective stories. I am personally curious how More...

0 comments like

Nov 19, 2011

Renee.turner26 rated it:

Hammett's meticulous record of every single detail can't match Raymond Chandler's meticulous record of every telling detail, and his convoluted series of murders by various characters for various reasons is hard to follow. Also, I'm still mad about how the bird turned out. I mean, come on. Give us the gold already.
However, this novel is the one that made Hammett's name for a very good reason---because it has atmosphere. In spite of the overlay of the classic voices of Sydney Greenstreet, More...

0 comments like

Nov 12, 2011

David rated it:

Hide the salami ... who hid the salami ...

Confession time - not much of a mystery fan. Too often the denouement reads like a recipe for a magic trick, revealing the steps & hidden secrets masked behind the often clever narrative. Well, Hammett does not fail here. If anything, he raises the craft of the whodunnit to a whole new level of artistry. And still, that is not what makes this a classic & must read. Written over 80 years ago, it has not lost any of its snap, crackle, pop. Sam More...

0 comments like

Oct 29, 2011

Andy rated it:

There are so many reasons why this is the archetypal detective novel. It's pure pleasure from start to finish.

Let's start with the writing. The prose is lean, but it has a way of sparing with the reader, a delightful economy and turn of phrase. Things are handled in a straightforward sequential manner. Simultaneously spartan and luxurious. There's actually a surprising amount of description. Nearly every character is detailed on first meet, often with a good full two paragraphs. But More...

0 comments like

Sep 25, 2011

Ashley rated it:

Oh, this book was so cool. All the swirling intrigue, and the uncovering of clues, and the inscrutable Sam Spade... yeah, it was thrilling. But at the same time, it's gritty. From the streets, to the hunt, to the language, it's an honest portrayal of reality.

The writing was amazing. Dashiell Hammett describes everything and everybody so eloquently and without distracting from the story. That was one of the things that impressed me the most, besides the complicated storyline.
More...

0 comments like

Aug 08, 2011

Heather rated it:

I chose this book for a work book club where the genre for the month was mystery. I was very happy with this book. It’s certainly a page turner because you never know who’s double-crossing whom until the end. I’d seen the movie, and found the movie to stay fairly similar to the book. Peter Lorre plays Joel Cairo in the movie, and he does not play him quite so overtly gay as the character is in the movie, but that’s to be expected in the time the movie was filmed.

I found Dashiell Hammett to b More...

0 comments like

Jul 10, 2011

Laura rated it:

Read it for my book club. Smartly written, well paced, lean and hungry text. Cleary hit a huge chord; this text has echoed through literature for eighty years.

Not sure I get why. Admittedly, I’m not a mystery fan, so I’m not in the target audience. And I’m predisposed to dislike Sam Spade; that whole Pinkerton Detective Agency lurking in the background. He did not charm me.

That said, I’d always heard the text was sexist and homophobic, and in absolute terms, I agree, but More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 09, 2011

Patrick rated it:

Dashiell Hammett practically invented the hardboiled detective story, and "The Maltese Falcon" is probably his best-known work, thanks to the movie of the same name. Most of the tropes of the genre start here: a loner in the lead role, a femme fatale, an occasionally adversarial relationship with the police, a penchant for steak and eggs. "The Maltese Falcon" was written before World War Two, so reading the book will take you back to a time when tough guys like private detect More...

0 comments like

Mar 07, 2011

Anna rated it:

This book is always described as a great American novel and one of the books starting the hard-boiled detective genre. That alone sets pretty high expectations for the story. Most of my expectations were not really met. But how to rate a book that was huge in 1930s and 1940s? The awesome Philip Marlowe is supposed to be based on Sam Spade, yet the image I got while reading was Eddie and Jessica Rabbit...
I'm sure I've read the book years and years back, but I had forgotten all about it.
More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)