In a detective story of this type—The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep—all you really have going for you is your main man: You see everything, the whole world, through his eyes, he keeps you company every step of the way. And if you don’t like being with Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, not all the plot skill in the world is going to make it a happy journey. If you are turned off by your host, forget it, it’s over. And what the coffee moment really turned out to be was an invitation that the audience gladly accepted: They liked Lew Harper. From that moment forward, the script was on rails.
