You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
coffeedog14 's review for:
The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I have seen the movie but never read the book before, and over the years I've heard all sorts of people call Sam "Cold" and "Hard" and etc etc. But like, I don't think he's exactly any of those things. To me he's clearly a highly functional sociopath, with literally only his secretary able to keep up with him or earning his respect.
Normally in a novel this might create problems, but the unique perspective this novel is written in, mixed with the fact that everybody *else* in the cast is also kinda a scumbag at best, makes for a thrilling noir crime story with a clearly characterized core cast bouncing off of one another and all scheming to get ahold of the nearly mythical Maltese Falcon.
It's definitely the kind of novel where you can see where entire genre's worth of other stories took inspiration from it, to the point that I ended up not being all that surprised by many of its twists. But... I can't deny that Sam Spade himself, the wolfish, devil-faced bastard trickster... he's utterly unique.
Normally in a novel this might create problems, but the unique perspective this novel is written in, mixed with the fact that everybody *else* in the cast is also kinda a scumbag at best, makes for a thrilling noir crime story with a clearly characterized core cast bouncing off of one another and all scheming to get ahold of the nearly mythical Maltese Falcon.
It's definitely the kind of novel where you can see where entire genre's worth of other stories took inspiration from it, to the point that I ended up not being all that surprised by many of its twists. But... I can't deny that Sam Spade himself, the wolfish, devil-faced bastard trickster... he's utterly unique.