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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
Women! Super coy, vulnerable yet crafty women! Also some other people! Sam spade gets wrapped up in a bunch of people trying to get hold of an old statue. Everybody is very dramatic and withholding. But Spade is pretty awesome and brutal and the writing is good. But mostly it’s annoyingly oblique convos and meetings in offices. Then it ends.
I'm not a mystery reader (think I overdosed on Nancy Drew and Boxcar Children books when I was younger), but I started a mystery book club at the library I work at and this was our first selection. I listened to this book and found it funny, entertaining, and enjoyable. The characters are really what sold this book to me (or the way they were read sold it to me). Does ANYONE tell the truth? Are they all pathological liars? Spade is a cool, chain-smoking private detective who's had an affair with his dead partner's wife and sleeps with the damsel in distress almost right away (and this is 1930 FYI). Effie is there to hold it altogether. Much of the "action" doesn't happen with you seeing it- it's someone else telling you what happened.
I listened to an Audiobook dramatization which was wonderful
Yep we all know the story - or so we think because we have seen the movie. However if you have never met Sam Spade on a page then you don't know the character, the author, nor the story. Hammett is the true master of noir.
Spade's partner is killed on the job and Spade is getting the heat for it. Spade is protecting a client who happens to be beautiful and feeding Spade a line. Everyone is looking for a gold statue of a falcon and keeps threatening Spade while brandishing guns. Hammett strings you along while Spade develops a convoluted solution to one big mess. If you loved Bogie, Chinatown, or even the Spenser television show, you have to read the original and then read Chandler.
Spade's partner is killed on the job and Spade is getting the heat for it. Spade is protecting a client who happens to be beautiful and feeding Spade a line. Everyone is looking for a gold statue of a falcon and keeps threatening Spade while brandishing guns. Hammett strings you along while Spade develops a convoluted solution to one big mess. If you loved Bogie, Chinatown, or even the Spenser television show, you have to read the original and then read Chandler.
One of the classics of the hard-boiled genre, Hammett's classic is a good one though I don't think it holds a candle to his sublime "Red Harvest." The dialogue is great and the plot is thick but I felt that it came just short of the greatness by which the work is normally assessed by. Not to dwell on that though, it's a great story in its own right and there were no disappointments from this reader.
Re-read (12/18/2018):
I had read The Maltese Falcon years ago but remembered very little of it aside from it having a complicated plot. Since I read it the same year I started delving hard into crime fiction, it kind of got lost in the shuffle of other classics I read, especially compared to Hammett’s sensational Red Harvest, a pulp masterpiece that would get my vote for best crime novel of all-time.
But as I have never seen the movie, and keep forgetting the thread of what many allege to be one of the great works of contemporary literature written in the English language, I felt like I should revisit this to see if there was something I missed in my initial need to consume fictional works of crime.
The answer is…no. Not really. The plot isn’t as complex as I recall, which is good. But this is a good-but-not-great work written by a writer who has more talent than this. The dialogue is good, sure but the characters are thin and you’re left wondering why even bother injecting Spade into this nefarious affair in the first place as ice from the need for a story. I think what The Maltese Falcon gets love for more than anything is being the OG of the anti-hero in crime fiction. For years, I had considered Sam Spade to be the force of good amidst the people lurking in the bad San Francisco underworld but Hammett introducing him as “Satan’s Angel” and not giving him many redeemable features shows that we’re not supposed to really like this guy. Nowadays, media is oversaturated with the male anti-hero, doing bad things to stop bad people. Again, much of this can likely be traced back to The Maltese Falcon.
It’s good, not great. Another re-read might help me appreciate Spade’s character more when the sun finally sets on that character’s archetype.
Re-read (12/18/2018):
I had read The Maltese Falcon years ago but remembered very little of it aside from it having a complicated plot. Since I read it the same year I started delving hard into crime fiction, it kind of got lost in the shuffle of other classics I read, especially compared to Hammett’s sensational Red Harvest, a pulp masterpiece that would get my vote for best crime novel of all-time.
But as I have never seen the movie, and keep forgetting the thread of what many allege to be one of the great works of contemporary literature written in the English language, I felt like I should revisit this to see if there was something I missed in my initial need to consume fictional works of crime.
The answer is…no. Not really. The plot isn’t as complex as I recall, which is good. But this is a good-but-not-great work written by a writer who has more talent than this. The dialogue is good, sure but the characters are thin and you’re left wondering why even bother injecting Spade into this nefarious affair in the first place as ice from the need for a story. I think what The Maltese Falcon gets love for more than anything is being the OG of the anti-hero in crime fiction. For years, I had considered Sam Spade to be the force of good amidst the people lurking in the bad San Francisco underworld but Hammett introducing him as “Satan’s Angel” and not giving him many redeemable features shows that we’re not supposed to really like this guy. Nowadays, media is oversaturated with the male anti-hero, doing bad things to stop bad people. Again, much of this can likely be traced back to The Maltese Falcon.
It’s good, not great. Another re-read might help me appreciate Spade’s character more when the sun finally sets on that character’s archetype.
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 [b:The Big Sleep|2052|The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)|Raymond Chandler|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327876070s/2052.jpg|1222673]? 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."
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 [b:The Big Sleep|2052|The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)|Raymond Chandler|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327876070s/2052.jpg|1222673]? 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."
I don't think Hammett's a great writer on the sentence level, but the ambiguities of the plot and characters was wonderful.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
4 Stars - I just relistened to the audible version of this book. I have, of course, seen the movie, and i first listened to the audiobook in 2009, but it just seemed like a good time for another listen. I think i enjoyed it even more this time. In fact, i raised my rating from 3 to 4 stars. The narration is excellent and of course it's a great story. If you like hard-boiled detective stories, this is for you. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are the mold all later hard-boiled detectives are made from.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Liked, not loved it.... I can appreciate the incredibly detailed and descriptive language that Hammett used which makes you easily see in your mind's eye the characters as well as the place. The plot was very good and even though I thought I knew how it was going to end, I was interested to the very end of the story. Many of the elements of this story have been utilized by other authors and scriptwriters since and it was interesting to trace the style of mystery/detective fiction back to its roots.