So a dame walks into a private detective's office...
Sound familiar? It probably does but luckily this is the noir detective novel. This is no ordinary dame and the office belongs to no ordinary detective. They are Miss Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the original femme fatale, and Sam Spade, the PI on which all fast-talking, tough, wisecracking PIs are based.
Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout, the cops want him for the murder, a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story and dubious motives begs for his help, gun-toting villains demand a pay-off he can't provide and everyone wants a fabulously valuable golden statuette of a falcon. Who has it? And what will it take to get it?
I'm not going tell you - you'll have to read it to find out! But I will reveal that The Maltese Falcon has gunfights, fistfights, lots of well-dressed men trading banter while well-dressed women watch, bodies pile up, the police blunder about, everyone drinks a lot and it is awesome! The solution is as complicated as the motives of the people gathered in Spade's living room but this book doesn't flow neatly, like our hero it swaggers through the streets of 1920s San Francisco with a gun in one hand and a lighted cigarette in the other.
Sorry if it seems like I'm gushing but I loved this book! The Maltese Falcon is all about the writing, especially the dialogue. It's stuffed full of snappy dialogue, brooding tension and a cast of odd and engaging characters without a good guy in sight. Sam Spade is the hero only by default; his motives are as grey as the clouds above and he saunters through the book as cool and as slick as a teflon cat.
Read On: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is another must-read for fans of the detective novel.
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