Reading a book like The Maltese Falcon is a little challenging for me. I've seen the beloved second film version many times since I was a child—it was also the first movie I watched in the first film studies class I ever took—so my expectations going in were that I would find little in the way of fresh experience. There's a distancing effect that happens to me where I find I'm often comparing what I'm reading to my recollections of the film. And those recollections aren't always accurate, despite how many times I've seen the movie, so the distancing is multiplied while I interrogate myself about my memories.

Look, I'm not going to argue that I'm not too introverted sometimes.

Anyway, the surprising thing is, about halfway through The Maltese Falcon I got completely engrossed in what I was reading and achieved the highly sought after Nirvana of total escapism. Mr. Hammett was that good.

From the first page, I was first surprised by the differences from the 1941 film. In the book, Hammet describes his main character Sam Spade as looking like a tall "blonde Satan." Like most people, when I hear the name Sam Spade, I think of Bogart, who was neither tall nor really devilish (at least in appearance).



But, this was still the point in the book where I was wrestling with my preconceptions. At about the point where Spade roughs up "the Levantine" Joe Cairo, I was fully immersed  in Hammett's morally grey world of tough guys and femme fatales. I stopped seeing Peter Lorre and Bogart and started seeing the characters as Hammett described them.

Part of my ability to lose myself in the book is the slightly different tone it takes. Probably as a result of censorship at the time, Hammett's novel seems harsher and darker than the movie. The book is not elaborately violent or sexy, but it definitely has more edge than the film. And Spade as a character displays an even more dubious morality than his film counterpart.

Do I need to recap the plot? It doesn't differ that much from one of the most popular films of all time. Sam Spade, a detective, and assorted criminals including one legendary femme fatale scheme and swindle each other over a rare historical object from Malta.

Hammett goes into considerable detail about the history and provenance of his MacGuffin; to the point where I felt like I was watching a lost Indiana Jones movie. It's a startling effective passage in the book and provides an interesting resonance to the proceedings that might otherwise be lacking if the characters were squabbling over more conventional spoils. It's easier to imagine everyone becoming obsessed with the Maltese Falcon because Hammett provides it with more back-story than some of the main characters—which is not at all a criticism on my part.

But what's really striking about the book is the absolute ambiguity (I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but stick with me) of Spade's moral calculus. There's some suggestion that Spade makes the decisions he makes in the course of the book because he believes in criminals being brought to justice, but it could just as easily be interpreted as Spade favouring that side of the game—slightly. In fact, his calculated approach to life ends up alienating his loyal to a fault secretary Effie. She comes late to realize what the reader has a few scenes earlier: Spade is basically a bastard, who may or may not have some rudimentary motivations left related to issues of justice.

The Maltese Falcon, the book, expresses a deeply nihilistic worldview that the movie only really suggests. The movie is a classic film noir, but can only touch on the blackness of the novel—still a bracily modern read, even over 80 years later.