Hammett - The Maltese Falcon review

A woman hires the detective agency of Spade and Archer to help find her little sister, who has run off with an older man. Before the night is over, Miles Archer is dead and so is his presumed killer. The police suspect Sam Spade, Archer's partner of at least one of the killings.

So, Sam had to find the woman who hired him and finds that there's no little sister. There are also quite a few people involved in a tangled web of double-crosses who are all trying to get their hands on a statue of a bird.

The Maltese Falcon is told in third person, but not the omniscient third-person narrative normally employed. It's told more as if the reader were a fly on the wall, watching everything taking place, but unable to get into the head of the protagonist, Sam Spade. Also, the narration only includes one side of phone calls, so you're not entirely sure what the characters are truly discussing.

This was a really fun book, and a relatively quick read. The only issue I had with it was having to decipher some 1920's slang. It's kind of cool, but in some cases the same terms mean far different things nowadays and that lead to a bit of confusion.


/ [Viking]

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