Chasing Sam Spade

Rating:
Summary: Chasing Sam Spade
Review: This is a great book! As a lifelong fan of "The Maltese Falcon" the title alone was reason enough to buy "Chasing Sam Spade". It turned out to be a great read for anyone who's ever seen/read "The Maltese Falcon" or anyone who has ever spent any time walking around San Francisco wondering what's going on in the dark corners away from the tourist traps.

The book caught me right from the start when the narrator, Danny Boyle, gets a letter from his murdered father and heads out to San Francisco to try to track down the killer. There may, or may not, be clues to a real crime hidden in "The Maltese Falcon" that Danny follows to solve the modern murder, so I sometimes had "...Falcon" open side by side with this book, following the trip he takes through the city looking for his father's killer - a trip that runs parallel to the one taken by Sam Spade. I recall that Dashiell Hammett said once that the city itself was as important a character as Sam Spade in his book. This one is the same. I really got a "feel" for the city, and some of those back alleys I'd never have the courage to explore myself. The book moved right along, right through to the surprising, and somewhat sad, ending. It's a complicated, gritty story that was a challenge to figure out. The language is sometimes strong and the violence is downright scary in some places where Danny Boyle is literally running for his life, but it really rang true.