Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON

by Joe Gores

Book Overview

1921. Sam Spade, a los 27 a?os, regresa de la primera guerra mundial para reincorporarse a su trabajo como investigador privado en la empresa Continental Operations. Spade, decepcionado tras resolver... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307277062
• ISBN13: 9780307277060
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

“Success to crime”

If you are a casual reader of Hammett, perhaps you’ve read The Maltese Falcon in college or you’ve leafed through The Dain Curse while recuperating, you will be impressed. However, if you are an ardent and avid aficionado of not just Hammett but the genre he gave birth to, if you have retraced Spade’s footsteps in San Francisco, if you have a black bird on your writing desk, then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed as Gores’ writing feels like listening to a cover band. The eye for detail is there, the approximation of the Master’s voice is there, the references pile up, but it’s all greasepaint. It has no voice of its own, no individual flavor, and nothing to make it special This should have been a graduate project and not a book for public consumption. It left me feeling more longing for the sharp semiautomatic clacking of Hammett’s prose.

A GREAT READ AND APT TRIBUTE TO THE MASTER

Who can forget the iconic Sam Spade, that terse, tough guy who prowled the streets of San Francisco in the 1930s? No doubt that with Spade Dashiell Hammett created a classic figure, a part of detective story. The Maltese Falcon in book form and on film have indelibly imprinted Spade upon our minds. Yes, we know a lot about this private eye - he's fearless, unlucky in love, fascinating, and smart. But Spade sprung upon our literary scene full-blown; he's used to checking out backgrounds - what about his? The top flight author of 17 novels, including Hammett, and recipient of three Edgar Awards Joe Gores has given us a gift - "Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon." enabling us to meet Spade in 1921. We see him setting up his own agency, and hiring the 17-year-old Effie Perine as his secretary for the princely sum of $10 a week. Once he's assured that she'll learn how to roll a cigarette, he adds, "If you make it through the first month maybe you'll get a pay raise. If you earn it." Of course, she more than makes it through the first month despite dealing with thugs, swindlers, incompetent cops, and almost every manner of human detritus while at the same time trying to look after her boss. Gores piles plot upon plot in his fascinating story, from smugglers to a runaway youth. He writes so succinctly, so crisply that you can almost hear Spade's rough voice as when he describes the dock, "In the bay Alcatraz was baying like an old hound, Land's End lighthouse was yapping back from beyond the Gate." Or, hear it his impression of an unknown secretary in the Flood Building who was "banging on a typewriter as if it were a faithless lover." This story is a romp, great fun to read and apt tribute to the master, Dashiell Hammett. - Gail Cooke

Brings Sam Spade to Life

If you're reading this then you already know that this is a prequel to Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON. The raison d'etre of this story is to let us know what Sam Spade and Company had been up to before they got involved with that black bird and I have to say the story does it's job admirably. The novel is broken up into three sections, each one representing a major case for Sam Spade and, except for a few brief encounters, we don't really get to know Miles Archer till the last one, though Sam gets to know his wife very well, early on and often. There is one main bad guy who is involved in all of the cases, a nemesis Spade can't catch, till the very end. Actually I think I would have titled the book SAM SPADE, because Archer isn't any more important that any of a number of other characters, but that's just me and that is my only criticism of this book. Also I'd like to mention the fine detail the publishers took with this novel. The way they yellowed the pages really makes you feel like you're reading a book that's been around for the last eighty years.

Does Dashiell Hammett Proud

It has been years and years since I've read The Maltese Falcon and I'm happy to say this story brought Sam Spade and Company right back into my mind, like I'd just finished yesterday. Mr. Gores has done Mr. Hammett proud. In The Maltese Falcon we see Sam Spade and the rest of the cast all grown up on the printed page. Mr. Hammett gave them no history, they were just there and he made them real. Still, I feel I know them better now. Who knew Sam fought in the war, though it's not hard to imagine. The story opens with the Flitcraft case that Spade only mentions in The Maltese Falcon and we really get a sense of why the man disappeared and we get of the younger Sam Spade as well, we learn about his sense of right and wrong and we like it, I do anyway. We find out about Archer's wife and we see that Sam has feet of clay, still a good guy though. We learn that Sam is brave, courageous and bold, that he's not squimish, even then he doesn't think twice about sticking a burning cigarette into a bad guy's eye. You don't mess with Sam Spade. And we also learn a bit about Archer, a guy we don't like. I didn't like his wife much either. And most delicious of all we learn that Sam has no problem dealing out his own kind of justice. He can set a trap for a man, bury him deep and not think twice if he knows in his heart he's doing the right thing. This is a good book and I can't help but think that if Dashiell Hammett were alive today, he'd be saying, "Good work, Joe."

A Wonderful Valentine for the Father of Hardboiled Fiction

Currently reading Joe Gores' latest, SPADE AND ARCHER. This is the first time the Hammett Estate has allowed another writer to revive his characters for a literary pastiche. Gores is as good a choice as one could hope to make. His dialogue is a dead ringer for Hammett. The book is filled with numerous in-joke references for Hammett buffs that Gores skillfully deploys without ever letting them get in the way of the plot, that its a delight on a whole other level. A great fun read in a grand style. Comparisons will inevitably be made to Robert B. Parker's two Chandler pastiches, but there is a distinction in that Gores has the advantage in giving us Spade before THE MALTESE FALCON or the short stories that Hammett wrote about the character. Parker's tasks (the first was completing a Chandler fragment begun at the end of the author's life after he had married Marlowe off and destroyed much of the character's mystique and the second was crafting a sequel to Chandler's first and most influential novel) were far more daunting, Gores is able to soak up the atmosphere of perfectly capturing Seattle and San Francisco in the ninteen twenties with familiar characters being introduced into Hammett's chronology that the reader naturally feels the same pure enjoyment the author experienced in crafting this particular labor of love. A wonderful valentine from a hardboiled master to the father of the genre and his many fans. Highly recommended.

daring prequel

In 1921 San Fransisco, Sam Spade quits the Continental Detective Agency to open up his own private investigative practice; partnering with Miles Archer who he knew married Sam's girlfriend Iva Nolan, when Spade volunteered for war service while he was serving overseas during the Great War. They hire Effie Perine as their secretary. Sam works on a missing person's case as banking heir Henny Barber vanished, but the sleuth believes he took a ride on the San Anselmo passenger ship to the South Pacific. That case leads Sam into investigating stolen gold coins purloined on the San Anselmo. Though he hands the case to the cops on a gold platter the police blow the case allowing the mastermind to escape. In 1925, insurance man Ray Kentzler surreptitiously hires Sam to determine the cause of death of banker Collin Eberhard as a homicide, a suicide or unfortunate accident. At the same time a friend of Effie, who still works for Spade & Archer, employs him to find her chest of Bergina. In 1928 Mai-lin Choi seeks money stolen from her famous father who never recognized his offspring. Her efforts take Spade & Archer back to the 1921 stolen gold coins case and the mastermind of that heist. This daring prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is a great historical private investigative tale that grips the audience from the onset as Spade goes into partnership with Archer. The story line is fast-paced with the sleuthing top rate. The tale would work as a superb one sitting stand alone even without its obvious roots, but the most fun is following the early days of characters who are in the Maltese Falcon as fans will relish Joe Gores' excellent homage to the classic. Harriet Klausner