The Maltese Falcon
TLDR: “Worth reading as a genre reference point”
When I read classics like this, I think to myself, “Man, this is so cliched…”
And then I have to remind myself: this is actually the source of the cliche.
Put another way: this isn’t cliched, everything else is cliched.
This is the story of Sam Spade, private eye of San Francisco in the late 1920s. Despite the ubiquitous voiceovers in movies, this is written in the third person. You don’t get inside the head of Sam. (I was surprised by this, because the classic film noir trope is the voiceover of the hero talking about some “dame” who walked into his office…)
Sam is hired to find a jeweled bird – a falcon, originally from Malta, that has some relation to the Knights Templar. It’s painted black to disguise its true value.
The problem is that everyone is lying to him about why they want it, what their relationship is to it, and why they want to hire Sam. He can’t really trust anyone, and he’s dancing around multiple agendas.
Also, Sam is an anti-hero. He’s not a really nice guy. He’s having an affair with his partner’s wife, and then his partner gets killed (not really a spoiler; it happens pretty early). Sam will seemingly lie and betray people whenever it suits him.
The plot drags a little in the second half, and I don’t totally understand the resolution of some of the threads. But it’s a thrilling novel, nonetheless, and it’s fun to read the source material for a half-dozen films, and perhaps the entire “noir” genre altogether.
Book Data
- Author
- Dashiell Hammett
- Year
- Pages
- 240
- Acquired
- Open Library
- OL47266W
- Wikipedia
- The_Maltese_Falcon_(novel)
- I have read this book. According to my records, I completed it on .
- I own (or have license to) an electronic copy of this book.