Customer Reviews

Hammett

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A wonderfully suspenseful novel that would make the real Dashiell Hammett proud. Gores did his homework well and it shows. I'm pleased to find that someone is carrying the torch for Hammett, and Chandler too. I've read all of their novels and this one rates right up there with the best. I look forward to the movie being released on DVD.

In my feckless twenties, long before seeing any of my own work published, I lived for a summer in an isolated cabin at Tahoe. My rent was that I would paint the place inside and out so it could be sold prior to ski season. Stashing items in the attic to keep them from getting splattered on, I found lost between the rafters a yellowed, 1940s paperback I'd never heard of: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Thus began a long infatuation with classic American crime novels. And of course, after haunting used bookstores and reading my way through Chandler the rest of that year, Dashiell Hammett was next up. Soon, I'd read my way through all those too.

I never really liked Dash as much as I liked Ray, but with books by both having given rise to wonderful Bogart movies, I had more ways to keep my infatuation alive. Joe Gores is yet another way, particularly in this book, which assigns well-plotted fictional events to a well-researched and only slightly fictional Dashiell Hammett. In other words, pure fun. Even some of Hammett's prose tics that account for my not preferring him to Chandler are reproduced with a flawless ear.

Still, Dash was the only crime writer of his era who actually made his living as a detective before he started writing, though a generation later Gores himself managed the same trick. Moreover, it's a trick that shows in all of Gores' work, and certainly to good advantage here. Adding to my enjoyment was that I didn't have to deal with Sam Spade and the extra effort it takes to not picture Bogart in action regardless of what's on the page. Hammett, the character, isn't Spade, doesn't act all that much like him, and from Gores' descriptions and the available photographic evidence, could better have been played by Burt Lancaster anyway.

So if you've ever been curious to take a realistic time warp back to mid-1920s San Francisco and experience prohibition from the inside, snap up a copy of Joe Gores' Hammett and start smiling. You might also want try a copy of Gores' Spade & Archer, about which I've posted another Amazon review.

No gimmick here. Gores has written, first and formost, the best hard-boiled detective novel I've read in a long time. The historical portrait of Hammett only makes it that much more endearing.

This book brings Dashiell Hammett back to life. It is a rich portrayal of the man in both his roles as a writer of mysteries and a detective/Pinkerton operative who investigated and helped solve real crimes. The story takes place in the streets of San Fransisco, where Hammett plied his trade.If you have read and enjoyed Hammett's works, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, etc. you will be enthralled by Gores working Hammett's real life with this fictional story of California in the rip roaring Twenties. A great companion book to Hammett's Maltese FalconThe Maltese Falcon or Joe Gore's prequel, Spade and Archer.Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon

I have an Orion Crime Masterworks paperback edition with a different cover than the one pictured.

First off, it struck me as somewhat pretentious to use Dashiell Hammett as the protagonist. I have read everything of Hammett's that I could get my hands on, and I was hoping for a skillful homage to the master. Unfortunately Gores' prose is not as tight or as precise, and his narrative not nearly as gritty. Even though this novel is much more explicit, more graphic than anything Hammett wrote, it still doesn't have the stark, mean, harsh quality that Hammett's fiction evokes. It lacks impact. Too soft.

It's not a BAD book; the story is satisfyingly elaborate, and in the grand tradition of detective fiction, the plot doesn't make sense until the end. You'll keep turning the pages to find out how it all fits together.

The book is peppered with regional & historical references that call undue attention to themselves. Gores makes a big deal of mentioning little details that Hammett would have taken for granted, and I got the impression he was showing off his research. It gets tiresome; it gets distracting. I wanted less set-dressing and more action.

The story would have worked better if the protagonist had just been some random gumshoe. Having it be Dashiell Hammett made me expect things that this book didn't deliver. Good enough as historical fiction, good enough as a detective story, but lacking that "something" that makes a novel truly Noir. And as a Dashiell Hammett homage, it falls flat.