The Maltese Falcon

May 17, 2013 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Lovers of Hard Boiled Crime Noir

Shelves: to-buy-fiction, modern-library-100, crime, noir, movie

Sam Spade will not play the sap for you. Shove off before you lose some teeth, because Sam will sniff out your game and disarm you without disturbing the curling black ash of his cigarette. At the San Francisco detective agency of Spade and Archer, they won’t believe your story, but they will believe your $200 cash retainer—which goes a long way towards establishing good faith in the 1920’s.

Sam talks in a matter-of-fact voice, devoid of emphasis. He prefers not to carry a gun, but he can fake in...more Sam Spade will not play the sap for you. Shove off before you lose some teeth, because Sam will sniff out your game and disarm you without disturbing the curling black ash of his cigarette. At the San Francisco detective agency of Spade and Archer, they won’t believe your story, but they will believe your $200 cash retainer—which goes a long way towards establishing good faith in the 1920’s.

Sam talks in a matter-of-fact voice, devoid of emphasis. He prefers not to carry a gun, but he can fake insincerity with better conviction than any cynic as he swigs his Bacardi out of a wine glass.

Sam’s partner, Miles Archer, has been shot through the pump while shadowing Floyd Thursby, also killed. Two deaths in the fog and Sam is suspect in both because he was cracking foxy with Miles’ old lady and because he had been just hired to follow Thursby by Miss Wonderly-Miss Leblanc-Miss O’Shaughnessy. (Let’s just call her Brigid.) You better take your eyes off her long legs and get your mind right. Brigid has a way with men, and even Sam’s loyal secretary, Effie, seems enamored with her.

Brigid’s story doesn’t jive, but Sam just takes out his lighter, snaps on a flame, and lets the game play. He confesses-- “I don’t know anything about women”—ah yes, the beginning of wisdom. So it’s time to fake a polite detached pose of a disinterested spectator as we meet two more of Dashiell Hammett’s shady characters: Joel Cairo--the perfumed and “mincing” Levantine; and Casper Gutman--possessor of a merry laugh, a purring voice, and an egg-shaped body.

All the characters play a con and chase a black bird statuette. What’s this bird that everyone’s so steamed up about? The Maltese Falcon is a solid gold, jewel-encrusted gift from the Knights of Malta to their benefactor, Charles V of Spain. But the statute disappeared in the 16th Century after pirates stole it and subsequent owners hid its vast wealth beneath a veneer of black enamel-- (symbolic of a certain character). (view spoiler)

This book is ground zero for pistol-whipping detective noir and was adapted for the famous 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. The book ranks #56 on Modern Library’s Best 100 Novels of the 20th Century but ignore Hammett’s “big, blonde Satan” description of Sam, you won’t need it because you’ll be thinking of Bogie.

Just watch your step on this short ride through Frisco Bay fog, or you’ll be picking iron out of your leaking liver. And remember, everybody….everybody has something to conceal. So until we know what your angle is—you’re suspect.

May 6, 2013(less)

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Dec 30, 2012 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Book Circle Reads 36

Rating: 3.5* of five, because I love the movie more

The Publisher Says: Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is morenoirthanL.A. Confidentialand more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. InThe Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammett's Sam Spade novels (includingThe Dain CurseandThe 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,...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime, hardboiled-and-noir, mystery, audiobook, ebooks, kings-of-badassia, 1930-1953

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 a lot of wonderful noirs out there, many o...more

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May 20, 2012 Dan Schwent rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pulp, 2012, crime-and-mystery

2012 re-read...
Sam Spade's partner is murdered and Sam is determined to find his killer. But what does Miles Archer's murder have to do with the client he was working for or the mysterious Maltese Falcon?

What can I say about one of the Big Two pulp detective novels, the other being The Big Sleep? Well, let's see...

The Maltese Falcon embodies a lot of what made pulp detective fiction great, leading to hordes of imitators. You've got the wise-cracking detective who has a way with the ladies, gunpl...more 2012 re-read...
Sam Spade's partner is murdered and Sam is determined to find his killer. But what does Miles Archer's murder have to do with the client he was working for or the mysterious Maltese Falcon?

What can I say about one of the Big Two pulp detective novels, the other being The Big Sleep? Well, let's see...

The Maltese Falcon embodies a lot of what made pulp detective fiction great, leading to hordes of imitators. You've got the wise-cracking detective who has a way with the ladies, gunplay, deceit, sex, and murder. Throw in an elusive macguffin and you have a blueprint a lot of writers have been following for over three quarters of a century.

Sam Spade, that blonde Satan, is the father of many detectives that came him. In fact, it would be interesting to see whether he or Raymond Chandler has more bastard detective descendents. The plot the Maltese Falcon is fairly simple. Somebody has the Maltese Falcon and everyone seems to think Sam Spade knows where it is. Miles Archer's murder complicates things a bit but really isn't much more than a bump in the road until his killer is revealed.

The bad guys and supporting cast are an interesting bunch. Brigid O'Shaughnessy lays the groundwork for a lot of femme fatales to come. Gutman, Cairo, and Wilmer are more than just stock characters. The cops were a little light on personality but they were mostly in the story to hassle Spade so that's not such of a big deal.

Hammett's prose drives the plot along but lacks the poetry of Raymond Chandler's. Seventeen years after I read The Maltese Falcon for the first time, I have more of an appreciation for Hammett's spare style. The plot keeps moving forward without a single misstep. It's only 200-ish pages but by the end, it feels like the perfect length for such a tale.

Any complaints? Not as such. Modern readers will probably not like the book's treatment of women but it was written in the late 1920's so it has to be given a bit of slack. Honestly, my only complaints are that there aren't any more Sam Spade books and that Dashielle Hammett wasn't Raymond Chandler.

For a parting thought, this line of dialogue nicely sums up Sam Spade's character:
"When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him."(less)

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Sep 06, 2010 Madeline rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-list, assigned-reading, detective-fiction

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 stolen and br...more 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 stolen and brought to San Francisco. There are fistfights, gunfights, slapping fights, lots of well-dressed men trading banter while well-dressed women watch, people get murdered, the police blunder around, everybody drinks a lot, and it's fucking awesome. Along with his talent for writing dialogue and action scenes, Dashiell Hammett also has a gift for physical description, as seen here:

"She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been chosen because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made."

and here:

"The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown. His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were dark and sleek. Dark ringlets thinly covered his broad scalp. He wore a black cutaway coat, black vest, black sating Ascot tie holding a pinkish pearl, striped grey worsted trousers, and patent-leather shoes."

The best part of all of this, really, is that a book that's full of all the awesome stuff I've described above is on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. So, take that George Elliot.

Read for: Social Forces in the Detective Novel

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Jan 08, 2009 Werner rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-crime-fiction

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 abou...more 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 about it, it's not my cup of tea. The problem for me isn't the dark subject matter: my literary tastes run to the Romantic school, with its appeal to emotion, and the perils and adventures associated with urban vice and crime in sinister settings can be potentially rife with appeal to various emotions. Rather, my negative reaction is to the moral orientation (or lack of it); the noir vision is typically amoral and cynical, convinced that virtue is virtually nonexistent and doomed to defeat if it does exist, and larded with an industrial-strength existential pessimism guaranteed to thoroughly depress most any reader. Related to this is the fact that while the traditional mystery genre sees crime as an aberration of the order of things, which can be detected and set straight by the application of reason, noir views crime as the norm and denies that reason and logic can do much with it. So, noir detectives don't do much traditional detecting.

To try to give Hammett his due within this subgenre, though, this is a well-done example of the school; its classic status is no accident. Sam Spade and the other characters are archetypes, not yet degenerated into stereotypes by the flood of imitations that would follow; Spade's likability factor is about nil (like all detectives of this stamp, he's often obnoxious, awash in chip-on-the-shoulder bad attitude), but you don't readily forget him, or Brigit O'Shaughnessy, Casper Guttman, or Joel Cairo. I read this novel forty years ago (it was included in a mystery anthology, the title of which I don't remember, made up otherwise of short stories); the fact that I can remember it very well after all this time says something about the vividness and force of the writing. And the solution to the murder of Spade's partner is one that does call for genuine deduction on his part, and is one I didn't see coming --though I might have if I'd been more familiar with the noir conventions. (It isn't as surprising as Christie's solution in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd --but it comes close.) A valid criticism might be that the San Francisco setting isn't really evoked very strongly --beyond a few place names and isolated details, the locale could be the mean streets of any city of that day. But Hammett's interest didn't lie in regional realism or a sense of place.

Later examples of noir acquired a reputation for milking sex and violence for all the titillation it was worth, but Hammett avoids explicit sex (though he makes it clear that some illicit sex went on at one point) or gratuitous directly-described violence. Likewise, the bad language is well within the bounds of respectable realism for the characters and situations.(less)

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Apr 26, 2012 Henry Avila rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 be confusing), 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 secretary, tells Sam, h...more

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Jun 04, 2011 Marvin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, favorites

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

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Apr 23, 2012 Maureen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, novels, noir

there are these big stories, stories that aren't necessarily long but are tremendously meaningful. they carry seeds of big things, of fundamental truths, that whisper to us of some big answer, the kind of answer we might wish for or even dread but don't dare believe. chipping away at the bumpers in the pinball game of our brains, these are ideas that compel us, that make us pause, and consider just what it's all about, and where we fit in. there's a story like that in this book. it's called the...more there are these big stories, stories that aren't necessarily long but are tremendously meaningful. they carry seeds of big things, of fundamental truths, that whisper to us of some big answer, the kind of answer we might wish for or even dread but don't dare believe. chipping away at the bumpers in the pinball game of our brains, these are ideas that compel us, that make us pause, and consider just what it's all about, and where we fit in. there's a story like that in this book. it's called the flitcraft story. you can read it, out of the context of the novel here: http://unfutz.blogspot.com/2006/11/30...

i love that story. i come back to it constantly when i read other stories, looping back to thinking who am i? can i change? can anybody? and how it is a perfect encapsulation of all the hope and fear i have about being and identity. i find myself muttering about beams falling, and looking up above me, hoping for one to come crashing down, to start me in a different direction even if it won't be entirely fresh.

i know. at this point you're probably thinking that i'm supposed to be reviewing the maltese falcon and i haven't said very much about the novel as a whole. it's not my favourite hammett book, though i love it for showcasing so many of hammett's strengths. and absolutely, even without the flitcraft story, the maltese falcon has a lot to recommend it: hammett's powerfully terse prose, biting, honest dialogue, the prototypical hard-boiled blond devil called sam spade with all his "v"s, and a story of misdirection rightly recognized as bedrock in the detective novel genre. so i can honestly say even without the flitcraft story this novel is a success, and as a part of a novel hammett sets us the story within the story in a way that balances the characters, and the novel itself: in the midst of all these lies, and games, there is that knowing that there is that answer just out of reach.

hammett is one of my all-time favourite authors. i think every book he wrote is worth reading, and that his writing is instructive. i will not compare him to others -- i believe as much as possible, one has to take him entirely on his own merits.

due diligence done.

last year, a recurrence of flitcraft obsession led me to the quote below, which comes from a memoir written by hammett's daughter, jo: Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers. it made me really happy that he took such pride in the thousand words that mean so much to me, especially that last line.

"My father and I were out on the lawn in the backyard of my mother's house in West L.A. There was a blanket on the grass and cards spread out. My father had been playing solitaire. He was in a good mood, leaning back against the lawn chair, wearing trunks and the sandals he'd asked me to find in Westwood. And out of nowhere particular he told me the Flitcraft story ... He told it with such delight and enjoyment, like a funny story you want to share ..." She describes the story, then adds, "What I remember is his delight in the story -- as if it were a gift he had received that was just right. As a boy he had wanted to find the Ultimate Truth -- how the world operated. And here it was. There was no system except blind chance. Beams falling."

beams falling. adjust to them not falling. or perhaps pray for them to, as the case may be. (less)

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Jan 11, 2009 Logan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Ernest Hemingway, Bruce Willis, Hugh Jackman and others plagued with an overabundance of machismo

Shelves: 1001-list, mystery-thriller

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 detective who seems to be...more 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 detective who seems to be at least as criminal as the baddies that he's tracking down. Misogyny flows through his veins as thick as the hail of bullets that gun down his partner in the story's opening pages. During the course of this book he beds and discards a bevy of women and when he isn't diminishing them or their thoughts he is grimacing at the distaste of dealing with their "feminine ways" (i.e.- crying, wailing, and causing an unnecessary ruckus).

In short, Spade is everything that Hammett's other character, the Continental Op, pretended to be but which proved to be only a ruse when the cards were on the table. Whereas the Continental Op has a decent idea of how things will play out when he starts throwing his monkey wrenches into criminal machinations, Spade seems to toss his sabots willy-nilly with little care as to the consequences and faith in his fists rather than his wits to get him out of jams. Still, as much as I may dislike the brutish Spade, I do appreciate the way that Hammett maneuvers him through the story until finally revealing the entire breadth of the mystery.

The story is a familiar one: Spade and his partner Archer are hired by the winsome Ms. Wonderly to follow a hood named Thursby for reasons that remain unclear. The first night of the detail Archer ends up at the bottom of a muddy gully with three slugs pumped into him. A few hours later Thursby ends up dead. Soon Spade is being pressed from all sides by buxom brunettes with more secrets than the CIA, a shady Turk who believes that Spade is in possession of a rare antiquity, the Maltese Falcon, and various and sundry hoods and hooligans. Can he solve the mystery before being arrested for his partner's murder?

I think I may have to space out these Hammetts a bit more than I have been so far. They're starting to have a negative effect on my normally congenial attitude toward people. Now when people are giving me the run around I find myself thinking that it's a perfectly legitimate method of questioning to shove them down a flight of stairs. Why not frame someone for a murder, if it will get me closer to a paycheck? I think the writers of "24" must be injecting pure undiluted Hammett directly into their jugular, their protagonists are so similar. Still, what works for FOX is not good for my own relationships. It's time to pick up something a bit more light-hearted before I fall into some nihilistic funk.(less)

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Oct 15, 2009 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

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

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May 01, 2008 John rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

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, despite Sp...more

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Jan 14, 2009 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: action, mystery-thriller, classics

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, which makes the story...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime

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 the feeling, when readi...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Nikki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, crime, classics

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

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Apr 13, 2011 Eddie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book

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

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May 05, 2012 Bev Hankins rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: hardboiled, mount-tbr-2012, mystery, private-eye, noir

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not a hard-boiled, private eye, noir-ish kind of girl. Philip Marlow, Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, Michael Shayne, Sam Spade and their fellows just don't really do it for me. At least not in print. The Maltese Falcon film with Humphrey Bogart? Love it. In fact, if I'm gonna do hard-boiled, private eye then I generally prefer them on screen....and in black and white, please.

But I gotta give Dashiell Hammett credit. That man could write. And I now kn...more I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not a hard-boiled, private eye, noir-ish kind of girl. Philip Marlow, Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, Michael Shayne, Sam Spade and their fellows just don't really do it for me. At least not in print. The Maltese Falcon film with Humphrey Bogart? Love it. In fact, if I'm gonna do hard-boiled, private eye then I generally prefer them on screen....and in black and white, please.

But I gotta give Dashiell Hammett credit. That man could write. And I now know why (beyond Bogey) I loved the movie....because so much of the dialog was lifted right off the page. And Hammett's dialog is absolutely right for this story. There are other reviewers that said that one annoyance with having seen the movie before reading the book is that you have Bogart's and Lorre's and Greenstreet's (etc) voice in your head when you read the dialog. I would say that one of the great things about having seen the movie before reading the book is that I have Bogart's voice in my head. He was absolutely perfect as Spade and I think it really helped me get over any lurking qualms I had about hard-boiled noir to have had the visual experience first. One of the rare instances when the movie got things right.

So...for those of you who have never seen the movie or read the book...here it is in nutshell. Sam Spade is a well-worn, world-weary private eye in San Francisco. He's approached by a woman who says she wants a man named Thursby tailed because he's run off with her younger sister. Spade's partner, Archer, agrees to do the job and gets himself killed for his good deed. Thursby winds up dead as well and Spade finds himself knee-deep in plot and counter-plot as the woman changes her name three times, various shady characters show up--all thinking he's got the goods on a mysterious black statue of a bird, and the police seem to think Spade's more deeply involved in the killings than is healthy for him. Spade has to fast-talk his way around suspicious cops, wily criminals, and gorgeous dames in order get out of this one with his skin whole. He also has to figure out who's side he's on...and who, if anybody, is on his. And just what is the limit of things people will do to get their hands on this fabled falcon?

Fast-talking, high-drama, action-packed mystery. A strong, flawed detective. A mysterious woman with more curves than mountain road (and that's just in the stories she's feeds to our hero). A terrific read...and that comes from someone who doesn't enjoy the genre. If you've seen the movie, but haven't read the book--you should. If you've read the book, but haven't seen the movie--you should. Great stuff in both formats. Four stars.

{This review is mine and was first posted on my blog at http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/20.... Please request permission to repost any portion. Thanks.}(less)

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Dec 05, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Shelves: mystery, ultimate-reading-list, crime, fiction, novels

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 Spade (The Maltese Falcon being...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Nicholas Armstrong rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 he would have...more 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 he would have any of the connections he does since he is such an unrelenting bastard. Perhaps if he was paying off his sources and allies it would make more sense; as it stands, I suppose I'm to believe all these women swoon for him and all these men line up to die for him because he's handsome and smokes a lot.

Spade isn't the only poor character though. Pretty much the entire cast are caricatures, but I'll give it to Hammett for putting in quirks to make them more real. Wilmer wants to be a tough guy and has a crush on the bosses daughter, Cairo wants the treasure but also wants Wilmer, Gutman wants the treasure and is willing to -- if painfully -- sacrifice a boy like a son to him. These are all very good and I'm happy to see them included because it really does make the characters out to be more than just cutouts. My problem, I suppose, is with their actions and how the story plays out.

The characters are needlessly protective and secretive. Everyone speaks in innuendo or sparsely and it's as if the whole world regards everyone else with shifty eyes. I thought it was a bit silly and probably held up only for secrets sake and to keep the surprises surprising. But, that said, the book took so many sharp right turns I don't think I could have predicted where it was going if I had had evidence. An artifact appearing amidst murders and one man being framed while another is being harassed -- it's all just a little too silly.

This is also the first detective novel I've ever read, and from what I understand a rather famous one, so perhaps that is only why I am surprised by the way things played out. Maybe this is no less silly than any other detective novel and I'm completely wrong. If that is the case, then I would say it's probably very good, even if the main character is an unlikeable wanker.(less)

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Feb 05, 2009 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, crime-fiction

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 September 1929 to January 1...more

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Oct 02, 2010 Sammi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

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 listen to hi...more

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Feb 18, 2008 matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, modern-library-100

This one's a gem. Calculating, ruthless, cool, suave, subtle, arithmetic, sexy, dark, breathless, detached, cool, slightly paranoid, slightly chivalrous, slightly drunk.

Did I mention it was cool?

O and, like, Sam Spade's a great character too.

Nothing like a little economy to keep a story's tension fraught. I'm a sucker for sharp sentences and utter crystallinity in prose settings and this one is rife with both.

A classic, trendsetter for a reason. It's bloody good.

And sam spade has got to be one o...more

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May 05, 2009 Jeanette rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fiction, classics, miss-trees

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 gets bumped...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Mike (the Paladin) rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Apr 14, 2013 Sean Beckett rated it 5 of 5 stars

Feels as though it was written recently and surprisingly hard-edged. They should make a film of this

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Jan 21, 2009 Gayle rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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Jan 13, 2009 Carrie rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 really care m...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

Amazon.com Review

Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Franc

...more

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

Amazon.com Review

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

Review

“Dashiell Hammett . . . is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer.” –The Boston Globe

“The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel.” –The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“Hammett’s prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.” –The New York Times

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Apr 15, 2013 Erik rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: made-into-movie

While it's true that Sam Spade & The Maltese Falcon came first and inspired Raymond Chandler, this is one case in which the original is not the superior.

Raymond Chandler could write circles around Dashiell Hammett, and it shows. Chandler's novels ooze with style, with flavor, with voice, with period details and noir delight, but this guy, famous though it is, feels like a stripped down version of all that. Sure the plot is there, the femme fatale, the double-crossing and innuendo, the wise-c...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Meg Domroese rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked this up for the library book club, which I won't make it to after all - wish I could to hear what people say about the tale and the style. Hammett is called the master of the detective novel, and he does keep the plot twists coming, but the dialogue is dated - in the same way that old movie dialogue feels jarring - stiff, shifty, shouting. I felt like I was reading a movie, with each character carefully described as he enters the room (which also has the effect of pausing the plot).
Her...more

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