The Maltese Falcon

Rating:
Summary: The paramount of Noir Literature and later film
Review: Alongside Raymond Chandler's Marlowe, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade is one of the most famous detectives from American literature. These two writers define what we know as the noir literature. Personally speaking, I found it more pleasant to read Hammett than Chandler. Both writers are great, and deliver the best in the prose, character development, settings and all, but I found "The Maltese Falcon" more interesting than "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell, my Lovely".

Hammett's prose is straightforward. He doesn't waste time with digressions and many descriptions -- only the essential. As a consequence, his novel is packed with action and mystery. It is not a surprise that this author writes with so much authority -- he used to be a private detective. Most of the book --if not the whole narrative --feels like getting inside information.

Hammett's style became a paramount in this genre and he has a major influence on many contemporary writers -- e.g. James Ellroy, Jeffery Deaver, and the French Jean-Christophe Grange among others. Hammett's prose is filled with witty observations on the American way of life -- mostly on the violence and corruption that were permeating the American Society.

Contrary to what many contemporary readers may wrongly assume, the older mystery novel is not as prudish and conservative as it may sound. Hammett's prose is more related to the 20s than the 50s. And in that early period society was looser than after the McCarthyism. Therefore, "The Maltese Falcon" can be a grateful surprise to many readers -- who will find drink, drugs, sex and sexual orientation (the Cairo character's sexual orientation has been largely discussed since the book was published).

However we are almost all the time with Spade, the reader has no access to his thought. It is the reader's job to reach conclusions and put the pieces together. And we can learn this from dialogues, events and mostly Spade's reactions and facial expressions. But this is not a hard job for the reader -- on the contrary, this is one of the best features of Hammett's style.

Of course, the movie version of the book is very famous --and almost as good. But it is always an irreplaceable pleasure to read Hammett's words. And to meet Spade before he `had' Bogart's face.


Rating:
Summary: A Mystery Landmark
Review: Thanks to the fact that I can't watch the image of Humphrey Bogart for more than thirty seconds before anti-peristaltic forces start taking over my digestive system, I knew of the Maltese Falcon, but did not know its story line.

Based on its literary acclaim and its high score on mystery officionados' "best of all time list", I spent a couple of hours with Sam Spade in the dark and dangerous dungeons of his imaginary existence. While I considered the plot development decidedly average, the atmosphere Hammett's prose sets and the uncertain world in which our "hero" and fellow cast try to make their moves helped define the genre.

Looking at the origin of the detective/mystery novel Poe and Conan Doyle stand out as the pillars on which the majority of the genre was built. While Conan Doyle set the stage for all puzzle solvers, Poe mined the deeper and darker territories of the human (sub)conscious.

Hammett's work strikes me as a defining link between Poe and the modern mystery novel. Sam Spade is a modern day Beowulf, following his own compass and code of honor in an atmosphere that was set in Poe's "Cask of Amontillado". He likes money, he likes booze, would be a good candidate for a "Sam-quits" anti-smoking campaign and last but not least can't keep his eyes or hands of the opposite sex.

Hammett surrounds Spade with a cast of characters who could be considered clichés to the modern reader, but are in fact archetypes that by now have populated millions of mystery volumes.

To me the plot was of limited consequence, yet Hammett's style and prose generate an endless series of sharp black and white photographs in a fast paced existentialist drama. Like Jorge Luis Borges, who acknowledged his depth to Poe's work, Hammett was instrumental in carving out a genre of his own that may miss the former's intellectual appeal, but is still more effective than the entire world of "classical literature" in keeping mankind reading.