Sunday, February 21, 2010
Spade & Archer
This book was written by Joe Gores, who isn't Daishell Hammett, but might as well be. It is a prequel to the famous Maltese Falcon, of Bogart movie fame. The last ten lines, in fact, are the first ten lines of Hammett's novel. The publisher is Alfred Knopf of New York.
This isn't one of my usual one-line reviews because I really liked this book. Besides, in order to have so closely duplicated (not quite perfect, but close) the style of another writer, Gores obviously studied Hammett's vocabulary, phrasing, even sentence length, and made quite a practice of duplicating those things.That could be a lesson to anyone studying to write fiction, I believe.
I did notice one thing that is different. Hammett refers to automobiles as "machines" in The Maltese Falcon, but Gores calls them "cars." The period references in the book that I know are all spot-on, and I wouldn't be surprised if "cars" is more accurate for the twenties, but not once does Gores use the term "machine" to refer to an automobile.
Other than that, it was damned near a perfect copy of Hammett's voice, and it made me want to read The Maltese Falcon again. In fact, if you've never read the Hammett work, you might start with Spade & Archer and go right into the earlier book when you finish. Even if you read them in publication order, though, you'll be sorry when you're finished. That's a promise.
Steve
This isn't one of my usual one-line reviews because I really liked this book. Besides, in order to have so closely duplicated (not quite perfect, but close) the style of another writer, Gores obviously studied Hammett's vocabulary, phrasing, even sentence length, and made quite a practice of duplicating those things.That could be a lesson to anyone studying to write fiction, I believe.
I did notice one thing that is different. Hammett refers to automobiles as "machines" in The Maltese Falcon, but Gores calls them "cars." The period references in the book that I know are all spot-on, and I wouldn't be surprised if "cars" is more accurate for the twenties, but not once does Gores use the term "machine" to refer to an automobile.
Other than that, it was damned near a perfect copy of Hammett's voice, and it made me want to read The Maltese Falcon again. In fact, if you've never read the Hammett work, you might start with Spade & Archer and go right into the earlier book when you finish. Even if you read them in publication order, though, you'll be sorry when you're finished. That's a promise.
Steve
