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Shadow Man: A Biography of Lewis Miles Archer
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According to Dashiell Hammett, a shadow man is "meant to blend in, to disappear by being always there." Hammett knew something about disappearing. Behind the shadows thrown by "Miles Archer," his fictional detective, was a very real detective—his partner in San Francisco, Lewis Miles Archer, a private detective so private that, when he went missing in February of 1929, no
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Paperback, 288 pages
Published
November 12th 2012
by Civil Coping Mechanisms
(first published October 1st 2012)
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Shadow Man is noir at its best. Gabriel Blackwell’s debut novel isn’t just a murder mystery, but an exploration of metaphysics, identity, and historical ontology. It’s a fast-paced read and after I first finished the book, I watched Maltese Falcon, read the book again, and like any great mystery case, saw so much more with the layers stripped away. I marveled at the attention to detail, the meticulous facts giving us ...more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrE7AR...
Shadow Man is noir at its best. Gabriel Blackwell’s debut novel isn’t just a murder mystery, but an exploration of metaphysics, identity, and historical ontology. It’s a fast-paced read and after I first finished the book, I watched Maltese Falcon, read the book again, and like any great mystery case, saw so much more with the layers stripped away. I marveled at the attention to detail, the meticulous facts giving us ...more

If you're a fan of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, or of the film versions of The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, or The Big Sleep - or even if you're just a fan of the hard-boiled gumshoe genre - you'll hugely enjoy this incredibly witty, incredibly colorful, incredibly complex puzzle box of a novel. Blackwell brings false leads and minor characters to life with a sure and snappy voice and an ear for the language and the tropes of the classic detective that makes this cerebral fare quite fu
...more

Oct 05, 2012
Joe Sacksteder
added it
The thing that I found most interesting about this book was how it shattered the comfortable "connection" that the reader is traditionally "supposed" to feel with the main character(s). Switching from notes to notes back to the true Shadow Man of the narrator was callous in the best possible way.
I really want to teach a class called "True Lies: Un-truth in Non-fiction," and this would be a text I'd consider. I love when research gets so obsessive that we have to question the narrator's intentio ...more
I really want to teach a class called "True Lies: Un-truth in Non-fiction," and this would be a text I'd consider. I love when research gets so obsessive that we have to question the narrator's intentio ...more

I like Blackwell as a person, and this book does nothing to make me think that's a mistake; while I was initially a little annoyed with the design and printing of the book—my cover was cut poorly, and I thought the decision to give so much of the book in italics and with a somewhat arbitrary margin was a little annoying. But a month since I read the book, I remember very little of that but still chuckle at some of the forced metaphors of Blackwell’s hard boiled style; really, the stylistic ventr
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I reviewed this book already for Ampersand Books. It's easily found. And much more in depth. I will just say that if you are a fan of pulp fiction, and in particular Hammett and Chandler, you need to read this book. There are some novels that when you put down, you just can't shut up about them. It seems like every other day I am telling someone to check out Shadow Man. Blackwell pulls of the niftiest trick. Be pays tribute without being derivative. He adopts the manner of speech, the tough guy
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Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler would both be pulling their hair out on this one as Blackwell out noir’s noir. Somewhere in between fact, fiction, and some third thing is this biographical fiction of fiction based on biography. Blackwell pulls together the fictional worlds of Hammett and Chandler (somehow weaving almost every complex plot of theirs that I’ve heard of into a single meta-conspiracy) and mashes it all up with fictionalized versions of the actual worlds of Hammett and Chandler
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I think this book undoubtedly succeeds at what it attempts to do. It takes classic noir and extends the stories and authors of the genre until they fray and start to unweave.
It asks a lot of the reader, I wish that I had a little more inkling of that before I started. As it was, I'm positive I didn't get everything out of this book. I will definitely read more of Blackwell, but hopefully go in with eyes wide open. ...more
It asks a lot of the reader, I wish that I had a little more inkling of that before I started. As it was, I'm positive I didn't get everything out of this book. I will definitely read more of Blackwell, but hopefully go in with eyes wide open. ...more

Here is a link to my review online at HTMLGIANT:
http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/shadow-m... ...more
http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/shadow-m... ...more
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