I finished reading Gores's prequel to The Maltese Falcon yesterday. I was at it for quite a while, mainly because there was too much commotion around here with my daughter being with us and what not, but also because the book proved out to be a bit of a disappointment.
Gores emulates Hammett's style pretty well, with the emphasis being on the surface of people and things, but the story just won't get started. It's only halfway in the middle when I really got interested in what was going on, and even then I couldnt' follow the plot all the way through. There were probably one or two too many subplots. And the main baddie came almost out of nowhere and seemed just a bit too improbable. The ethos of capitalism's rotting greediness that is so prevalent in The Maltese Falcon is largely missing, even though Gores throws in a subplot about the Leftist movement in the San Fransisco yards in the 1920's.
Spade & Archer should've been shorter and tighter to really work, but there's much to like, too. The ending lines are great. On the left there's the cover for the Finnish edition that is just out.
3 comments:
I probably shouldn't write/confess this, but I started the book twice and cast it aside both times. Never got further than fifty pages. Just couldn't get into it. Perhaps another day ...
Yeah, I can actually understand what you're saying there, Frank.
It means you can't always blame the circumstances around you: the book can also be boring.
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