Springcleaning – Book 14 “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett

Sam Spade is a Private Detective based in San Francisco. He appears in some short fiction by Dashiell Hammett but The Maltese Falcon is the only full length book in which he features. It is highly regarded as a crime classic, in the style of Raymond Chandler, and was made into a very successful film which I think that I have seen at some point, although I don’t remember it well. The book was originally published in 1930 and reflects the attitudes of the time towards gay or effeminate looking men and Jews.

Sam is hired by the mysterious Miss Wonderly to find her missing sister but when his partner is killed he soon learns he’s actually caught in a web of lies, betrayal and murder and that Miss Wonderly and her sister don’t exist. No one in this book ever seems to tell the truth or answer a question in a clear way so both Sam and the reader are always one step behind the bad guys, assuming that they can ever work out who the bad guys are ! At the centre of the story is a missing statue of a bird which is worth a considerable amount of money and a variety of characters are prepared to lie, steal and murder to get hold of it. They betray one another happily and Sam is physically assaulted by more than one of them. The police have their own theories and it would suit them well enough to blame Sam for everything and close the case when he is locked up.

I very much enjoy Raymond Chandler’s books with which this one is often compared (see a review of one of these here) but there is a difference in style between the two authors. The environment Hammett creates in this book feels cold and bleak and because the book is written in the third person the reader never gains an insight into Sam’s thoughts and feelings until the very last chapter. Hammett is also a less witty writer and there isn’t the glorious turn of phrase which makes Chandler’s books so enjoyable for me. You can’t help the comparison, especially considering that both writers revel in very convoluted plots, but Sam Spade is a different person from Philip Marlowe, even if Humphrey Bogart played them both on film.

I did enjoy this book and it certainly kept me engaged as I tried to follow the twists of the plot and work out what side each character was on – usually their own. I received this book as part of my monthly secondhand book subscription package and it was a recent reprint in excellent condition. I have passed it on to my favourite Oxfam bookshop so that it can find a new reader.