The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

 

The Maltese Falcon

by Dashiell Hammett

Sam Spade is a private detective in San Francisco. He is stoic, shows little emotion, and likes to be a thorn in the side of the police, who seem to have it out for him or are trying to find him at fault in some way.

A woman named Brigid comes to him looking for help under an assumed name. She refuses to tell him how he can help her, but insists she needs him. Sam and his partner (Archer) take her case and Archer ends up murdered, along with another man who turns out to be Brigid's former associate in search of the Maltese Falcon, a gold statue that is worth a fortune. But they were not the only ones looking for it.

Another set of characters was also on the hunt, among them the leader Gutman, the surprising gay character Cairo, and Wilmer Cook, a youth who is good with guns. A series of events leads the whole group to come together with Sam Spade trying to figure out how everyone is involved. He learns about their various connections to the Falcon and to one another and plots to get himself out of the situation alive, while keeping clear of any wrongdoing in the eyes of the cops.

Sam Spade was an interesting character, in that he seemed morally gray a lot of the time. At various point I thought he was going to actually work with the criminals and allow himself to be paid off to keep his mouth shut. It's possible, if events went a different way, that he would have done so. In the end he ends up saving his own neck and throwing Brigid under the bus and calling in the police, exposing the others. That moral ambiguity was interesting and the scenes in which the group are all together were the best parts of the book.

The rest was not really to my taste. The writing was very simple, almost too simple in its construction, with repeated words and phrases, and almost no discussion about psychology or feelings. There are many descriptions that seemed unnecessary and didn't aid the plot in any way. I'd say the writing is the epitome of a masculine style, a style that isn't to my liking. It is story of its time, for sure, with women being manhandled and men posturing, calling one another names, and including stereotypical descriptions of homosexuality and obesity.

I'm sure The Maltese Falcon has its audience that adores it, and that it had its place in detective fiction, but, I wasn't excited to read it, and in fact wanted to fall asleep a few times. For me it was a 2-star book.