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| | Publisher: Mystery Guild
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| Used Price: $1.85 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
THE MALTESE FALCON (1930) set the standard by which the private eye genre is judged. Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?
Description of The Maltese Falcon:
Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammett's Sam Spade novels (including The Dain Curse and The Glass Key), Spade is tough enough to bluff the toughest thugs and hold off the police, risking his reputation when a beautiful woman begs for his help, while knowing that betrayal may deal him a new hand in the next moment.
Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he can't provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spade's solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed.
Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the movie, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman "Angel" and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guy's perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If you're riveted by Chinatown or wonder where Robert B. Parker's Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master. --Barbara Schlieper
The Maltese Falcon Reviews:
Avoid Theater of the Ear's Idiotic Audio Adaptation 
2009-09-10 - "The Maltese Falcon" is a fine detective yarn but you should avoid buying this audio dramatization. I've got no problem with the idea of casting actors to read the various characters in the book, but whoever produced this version is a moron. The different actors take turns reading not only their dialogue but also the words of the narrator. So the voice of the narrator switches in mid-paragraph, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence! Even more ridiculously, the actors reading the narration stay in character, so you will sometimes have the third-person narrative portions in the voice of hard-boiled detective Sam Spade, then a second later in the voice of femme fatale Brigid O'Shaugnessy, villain Joel Cairo, etc. It is confusing, distracting, and makes absolutely no sense. I think I am stating the obvious in pointing out that the narrator of this novel is a single voice, a voice carefully crafted by the author Dashiell Hammett. I'd recommend skipping this adaptation, and probably anything else produced by "Hollywood Theater of the Ear."
Entertaining, but showing its age 
2009-07-20 - Dashiell Hammett's _The Maltese Falcon_ is classic noir: the hard-nosed detective with his own code of ethics, a variety of bad-guys and of course, a woman in distress, the original femme fatale. These elements of the book I enjoyed, even if I struggled with not hearing Bogart, Lorre and Greenstreet in my head reading dialogue. But oh, what dialogue! Terse, concise, snappy dialogue that one associates with the genre.
The story itself was a bit convoluted, which I enjoyed. Sam Spade, the detective hired to recover the Maltese Falcon rarely gets a straight answer, and Hammett is stingy with clues to help the reader along. Instead, I found myself simply hanging on, trying to piece together who did what to whom and who to trust - a similar situation Spade finds himself in. Apparently this isn't to every reader's taste - I thought it worked well and moved the plot along at a rapid pace.
The story does show its age. Not only through the ubiquitous cigarettes Spade (and others) burn through and the copious amount of alcohol consumed, but especially in the way in which Spade treats and reacts to women - truly the 1930s were a time of "men's men" and clearly a full generation before second wave feminism. Taken at face value as a product of its time, however, to edit this out would be to rob the story (and characters) of its flavour.
I pride myself at being able to piece together a mystery - or at the very least have some sort of a handle on it. Not so here - reading Hammett was similar to being tumbled around by a wave - you have no sense of direction, you feel helpless in its grip, and you are running out of oxygen - the best you can do is continue to hold your breath and wait for the wave to break. Likewise Hammett kept me holding my breath and waiting for the final "who dunnit" until literally the last page.
While I can't say I will rush to read more by him, I was certainly impressed with his storytelling. Recommended.
Lots of nerve, lots of smarts 
2009-07-11 - As one of the four people who've never seen the movie, I picked this up looking for something well written but different than my last few books. It fit the bill well. Hammett brings Sam Spade to most vivid life. He wouldn't pass muster for twenty-first century politically correct behavior, especially towards women, but he fits his times. He's a character to like in spite of sometimes shaky ethics and behavior. He has smarts and lots and lots of nerve, backing down from nobody, whether that person is a police officer, holding a gun to him, or being disrespectful in any way. He pairs that chutzpah with those smarts to come to the bottom of the case, turning to violence as a last resort, a pleasant change from some modern shoot-or-hit-with-the-slightest-excuse `detectives'. One might fairly take objection to rather shallowly developed women, but the truth is, Spade is so enjoyable and Hammett's writing so descriptive and clear, that overlooking that (and liking Effie among others) makes this an entirely pleasurable read. San Francisco in the `30s is just gravy. Time to go see the movie and read more of Hammett!
Convoluted plot of "greatest detective novel of its time" went right over this detectively-challenged reader's head 
2009-06-22 - Call me confused (not dumb, please) but even after reading the book (as part of our community's The Big Read) and watching the movie (within the same week), I still did not entirely get who killed whom. And when I have to browse the internet to learn way more about the plot and characters than I can decipher on my own (see detnovel.com), I figure it's just not the book for me. Such is the case with The Maltese Falcon.
Although I'm glad to know what it's all about (that web site was really helpful), The Maltese Falcon is not a book I'd want to read again much less recommend to others. The Sam Spade character is great (pre-James Bond ladies' man cool), in spite of being your basic sexist (okay, okay, it was published in 1930), as is Mrs. Wonderly with her tendency towards convinciveness. The secondary characters were well thought out and varied and the plots' twists, turns and betrayals were decent, but it was just not my cup of tea. In summary: well done for its genre, but too confusing for non-fans of detective novels. Better: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (classic mystery), The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (scarily disturbing) and Homocide: Life on the Killing Streets by David Simon.
A Classic Shows Its Age
2009-05-29 - Dashiell Hammett often gets credit for pioneering the American detective novel. He brought a depth to the genre that had been lacking in previous novels. The Maltese Falcon is Hammett's most-famous novel. Almost 80 years after its publication, the novel is still very entertaining, but it has also aged a bit.
There are many things to like about Falcon. Hammett spends considerable time on character development. I particularly liked his portraits of desperate, pathetic tough guys. The story is a great adventure that keeps the pages turning. There are also several good twists in the plot that will surprise readers.
Hammett has a talent with dialogue, and there are some great lines. Consider -
At one point, Sam Spade says to a cab driver "Well, hack-drives don't' live forever."
The man replies, "Maybe that's right but, just the same, it'll always be a surprise to me if I don't."
The success of and critical praise for Hammett's novels drew waves of imitators. Though it is not Hammett's fault, the action and dialogue in Falcon often remind the present-day reader of all of the B-movies that he or she has seen. Time has not been kind to Sam Spade (Hammett's detective), either. Spade is a little like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond in that he is too good to believe. Since Hammett is always trying to "puff up" Spade, the other characters in the novel (police, crooks, femme fatales, etc.) often interact with Spade in ways that are unbelievable.
In the end, The Maltese Falcon is a must for any true mystery fan. Time has worn away a little of the Falcon's luster, however.
