Spade and Archer
Joe Gores
Mystery
A very good prequel to The Maltese Falcon, giving Sam Spade a backstory that makes him a little more likable than in the original. The Hammett-esque language is a pleasure to read, and the mystery (or mysteries, to be pedantic) are more involved than most of the imitators can manage. Recommended for noir fans of all stripes.
I thought Spade's cold unlikability made him a better fit for his milieu -- what sort of person becomes a private detective, after all? It's Spade's lack of sentiment that gets him out of trouble at the end of The Maltese Falcon.
ReplyDeleteThat's rather interesting. It's not universally true of private eye heroes, certainly. What is it about Spade in particular?
DeleteSpade and Archer shows him in the process of becoming that guy. I thought it was an interesting read.
Private-eye stories generally need a lot of reader collusion. The private-detection business is pretty nasty -- mostly it consists of spying on people. Unless you're willing to root for the protagonist just because their picture is on the cover of the book, the writer has to do something to win you over, which usually is to use the private eye's inner monologue to sell you on his side of the story. You also have to overlook that nice people wouldn't last very long in that business. (How does Spenser make a living? None of his clients ever pay him because his soft heart always leads him to do what he wants to instead of what they hired him to do. His stories always start with the new client saying "I heard you were good" and I always wondered "From whom?" Spenser never had any satisfied clients.)
DeleteThe Maltese Falcon is told by a non-omniscient narrator. At no point in the story is there any description of anyone's inner state; all we see is their actions. Everything Spade does is in his own interest. Even when he turns Effie in at the end, it's to save himself from taking the fall for Archer's murder. The thing I like about the story is that it shows us what a private eye's work looks like when it's not colored by a self-serving narrative.
Actually, I did the math once and worked out that a statue the size described, made of solid gold, would have weighed 198 pounds, so Spade should really have noticed something was wrong when he could just pick it up in one hand.
ReplyDeleteI think we have to chalk that down to it being Movie Gold, not unlike the idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Similarly, we have Movie Diseases (which always kill in dramatically-appropriate timeframes), Movie Spaceship Life Support, Movie Alcohol, and so forth.
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