I never realized I was a fan of vintage crime stories until I finished reading this easy-reading & absorbing novel. The author, Joe Gores, received permission & inspiration from the only surviving daughter of the author of the 1931 best seller - The Maltese Falcon - to write this preclude to that book, including its main character, Sam Spade.This new book takes place in San Francisco during the 1920's - an era of bootleg whiskey, brothels, longshoremen unions, & corruption. Sam takes on a partner, Miles Archer, to his private detective agency. Sam develops a reputation as someone who will go to whatever length is necessary to solve his clients' issues. The book has several subplots of cases he's hired to work on which all unbelievably manage to merge together at the end of the story - an achievement in itself to his iconic writing ability.What I appreciated most was the extremely descriptive manner, flush with endless adjectives, in which he vividly wrote about clothing people wore, furniture, salaries, deco items, commercial buildings, walk-up flats, vehicles, & just about everything synonymous with that era. He did his homework with this research.If you're a fan of the 1920's (as I am), you'll relish this book. Being a long time crime-buff and including both "Red Harvest" and "The Maltese Falcon" high up on the list of the "best novels I have ever read", I was keen to try this book but also anxious that it would let me down... Was it as good as the original? No. But it was a very good book.What Joe Gores does extremely well is pay tribute to all that is good about Dashiell Hammett. He revels in the task, struts his literary stuff, and winds up with a very respectable spin-off. The characters are true to form, and there's nary a word out of place for the familiar favourites. I have no trouble at all reconciling this backstory with Sam Spade and Effie, and will probably remember it fondly the next time I read "Falcon".Another interesting touch is that the book is really three back to back episodes, each one with it's own intrigue and quirks. I feel like this makes "Falcon" all the more significant, as a more complex and substantial adventure, rather than a "just a sequel" - god forbid! I might have preferred three separate adventures, as opposed to them being so interconnected, but I enjoyed the wide range of characters and settings.My only real criticism is that this book was very much like Hammett... but it wasn't Hammett - and I don't think a reader will forget it for even a second. The stories, the characters and the setting are all superb, but the style lacks some of the awesome bite (and perhaps the quotability). No passage particularly stood out and grabbed me, which happens without fail on almost every page of "Harvest" and "Falcon". This is definitely a work of exceptional fan fiction, not a literary masterpiece in its own right.
What do You think about Spade And Archer (2000)?
Not a bad pastiche but didn't really hold my attention. I couldn't finish.
—Draco405
