Customer Reviews

Spade & Archer (Center Point Platinum Mystery (Large Print))

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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