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Hammett
From Chinatown's dark alleys to the fog-shrouded Golden Gate, crooked politicians ran San Francisco. To Hammet, retired Pinkerton detective and struggling writer, it was all just grist to his fictional mill. Until the night his pal walked into a baseball bat. Then Hammett hung up his typewriter, put on his gumshoes and went out into the brawling, swaggering city to find the brutal murderer.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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250 people want to read
About the author
Joe Gores
66books32followersJoe Gores (1931-2011) was the author of the acclaimed DKA series of street-level crime and detection, as well as the stunning suspense novels Dead Man and Menaced Assassin.
He served in the U.S. Army - writing biographies of generals at the Pentagon - was educated at the University of Notre Dame and Stanford, and spent twelve years as a San Francisco private investigator. The author of dozens of novels, screenplays, and television scripts, he won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards and Japan's Maltese Falcon Award.
He served in the U.S. Army - writing biographies of generals at the Pentagon - was educated at the University of Notre Dame and Stanford, and spent twelve years as a San Francisco private investigator. The author of dozens of novels, screenplays, and television scripts, he won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards and Japan's Maltese Falcon Award.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 24, 2015
A cracking good read. Having devoured all of Hammet's actual fiction that I could lay hands on, my personal "bar" for this book was set pretty high. Joe Gores met my expectations. He handles the noir idiom extremely well, and the story is as well-written as any of Hammett's own. The twists in the tale caught me unawares. If I have one complaint, it is that Goodie just sort of vanishes, but then she's only the secondary "girl", rather like Effie in the Maltese Falcon--there to fetch and carry when needed (or at least make coffee and provide a phone) and then vanish when her task is over.
Published in 1975, we are thus saved the graphic violence that might have been included had it been published recently. I'm not kidding myself; the stories published in the original Black Mask were pretty darn graphic sometimes. But good writing doesn't actually need it, and Gores knew that.
My copy included and Afterword by the author that rather went out of its way to explain things, present the author's credentials as "a detective, not a writer" etc., which rather took the shine off things for me. If you have to explain your purpose, you haven't achieved it. The book could have stood on its own merit without that.
Published in 1975, we are thus saved the graphic violence that might have been included had it been published recently. I'm not kidding myself; the stories published in the original Black Mask were pretty darn graphic sometimes. But good writing doesn't actually need it, and Gores knew that.
My copy included and Afterword by the author that rather went out of its way to explain things, present the author's credentials as "a detective, not a writer" etc., which rather took the shine off things for me. If you have to explain your purpose, you haven't achieved it. The book could have stood on its own merit without that.
October 12, 2013
When I discovered this novel, I jumped on it. I don’t know how I missed it. I very much enjoy humorous mysteries; I have read 32 Cadillacs and a couple of Joe Gores’s other DKA novels. This book was no disappointment; Gores is a masterful novelist. If Hammett has any appeal to you, read this book.
Gores wrote that “I didn't start out to be a mystery writer.�
It is lucky for us that that is what he became.
Joe Gores was a three-time Edgar Award winner, and only one of three authors (the other two being Donald E. Westlake and William L. DeAndrea) to receive Edgars in three separate categories. He was recognized for his novels Hammett, Spade & Archer (the 2009 prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon) and his Edgar Award-winning or -nominated works, such as A Time of Predators, 32 Cadillacs and Come Morning.
In his web posting, “Why I Write Mysteries,� he relates:
In 1955, Stanford University refused me a Master's Degree in English Literature because my proposed Thesis was on the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. “Since these novels are not literature," they said, "obviously graduate theses cannot be written about them.� That is, if fiction is fun to read, it is mere escapist fare.
[I] discovered that the mystery is the only fiction genre that lets you write anything you want while demanding a form that makes you tell a story people want to read.
So I write my mysteries for pleasure, mine and I hope yours, and for money.
I think that this prejudice against mysteries has declined, although not completely. In a teaching job interview not too long ago, I was asked what novel had I read recently that I had enjoyed. The title that popped into my mind, out of all the books I had read in the past few weeks, was a mystery. Interestingly, the interviewer knew the book, and we talked about it. Later, I thought that maybe I should have mentioned another book because, well, is mystery literature? It is, as far as I am concerned!
Gores explains much better than I can the appeal of the type of mystery I prefer:
The opening line of “Gone Girl� [a short story Ross Macdonald wrote, featuring an early incarnation of private eye Lew Archer. The piece was written in the 1950s.] was ‘I was tooling home from the Mexican border in a light blue convertible and a dark blue mood,’� Gores recalls. “And I thought ‘My God, that is the way I want to write! . . . That kind of tightness, that kind of directness, no nonsense, no navelgazing. You are in there to create vivid characters who are doing extremely interesting things and that’s it.�
I have little patience for the type of mystery that involves the detective’s personal life. As I mentioned in another blog, this refers to such writers as Sarah Paretsky, Rita Mae Brown, and Sue Grafton. Unfortunately, this seems to be a fault of women mystery writers. But I generalize�
Hammett is excellent. I could have been reading Dashiell himself. The setting, the plot, the dialogue, the prose � all tone-perfect. Hammett, when published in 1975, was well-received as a fictionalized version of the adventures of Samuel Dashiell Hammett. Wim Wenders directed the movie version in 1982, which I’ll have to try to find. Decades later, Gores still felt he had “unfinished business� with the author, so in 1999, he asked Hammett’s daughter, Jo Marshall, if the family would consider a new book based on The Maltese Falcon.
Although Marshall first said no, she had a change of heart. As her daughter Julie Rivett puts it, the family felt that Gores was the right guy to take up her grandfather’s story. “He’s walked the walk as well as talked the talk. He knows as well as anyone where those characters came from,� she said.
Gores released Spade & Archer, a prequel novel that explains how Spade came to seek the falcon statue that is perhaps the greatest MacGuffin in detective fiction. It is both a love letter to the original work and a satisfying read for Falcon fans that circles back to where Gores’s own hard-boiled history—and the genre’s—began: with an appreciation for the finely written line, and a nose for trouble. I haven’t read this book; I intend to. The reviews I read were very positive.
Gores, who had been working on a new DKA novel, died 50 years after Hammett's death, to the day. RIP, Joe Gores, and thanks for all the books.
Gores wrote that “I didn't start out to be a mystery writer.�
It is lucky for us that that is what he became.
Joe Gores was a three-time Edgar Award winner, and only one of three authors (the other two being Donald E. Westlake and William L. DeAndrea) to receive Edgars in three separate categories. He was recognized for his novels Hammett, Spade & Archer (the 2009 prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon) and his Edgar Award-winning or -nominated works, such as A Time of Predators, 32 Cadillacs and Come Morning.
In his web posting, “Why I Write Mysteries,� he relates:
In 1955, Stanford University refused me a Master's Degree in English Literature because my proposed Thesis was on the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. “Since these novels are not literature," they said, "obviously graduate theses cannot be written about them.� That is, if fiction is fun to read, it is mere escapist fare.
[I] discovered that the mystery is the only fiction genre that lets you write anything you want while demanding a form that makes you tell a story people want to read.
So I write my mysteries for pleasure, mine and I hope yours, and for money.
I think that this prejudice against mysteries has declined, although not completely. In a teaching job interview not too long ago, I was asked what novel had I read recently that I had enjoyed. The title that popped into my mind, out of all the books I had read in the past few weeks, was a mystery. Interestingly, the interviewer knew the book, and we talked about it. Later, I thought that maybe I should have mentioned another book because, well, is mystery literature? It is, as far as I am concerned!
Gores explains much better than I can the appeal of the type of mystery I prefer:
The opening line of “Gone Girl� [a short story Ross Macdonald wrote, featuring an early incarnation of private eye Lew Archer. The piece was written in the 1950s.] was ‘I was tooling home from the Mexican border in a light blue convertible and a dark blue mood,’� Gores recalls. “And I thought ‘My God, that is the way I want to write! . . . That kind of tightness, that kind of directness, no nonsense, no navelgazing. You are in there to create vivid characters who are doing extremely interesting things and that’s it.�
I have little patience for the type of mystery that involves the detective’s personal life. As I mentioned in another blog, this refers to such writers as Sarah Paretsky, Rita Mae Brown, and Sue Grafton. Unfortunately, this seems to be a fault of women mystery writers. But I generalize�
Hammett is excellent. I could have been reading Dashiell himself. The setting, the plot, the dialogue, the prose � all tone-perfect. Hammett, when published in 1975, was well-received as a fictionalized version of the adventures of Samuel Dashiell Hammett. Wim Wenders directed the movie version in 1982, which I’ll have to try to find. Decades later, Gores still felt he had “unfinished business� with the author, so in 1999, he asked Hammett’s daughter, Jo Marshall, if the family would consider a new book based on The Maltese Falcon.
Although Marshall first said no, she had a change of heart. As her daughter Julie Rivett puts it, the family felt that Gores was the right guy to take up her grandfather’s story. “He’s walked the walk as well as talked the talk. He knows as well as anyone where those characters came from,� she said.
Gores released Spade & Archer, a prequel novel that explains how Spade came to seek the falcon statue that is perhaps the greatest MacGuffin in detective fiction. It is both a love letter to the original work and a satisfying read for Falcon fans that circles back to where Gores’s own hard-boiled history—and the genre’s—began: with an appreciation for the finely written line, and a nose for trouble. I haven’t read this book; I intend to. The reviews I read were very positive.
Gores, who had been working on a new DKA novel, died 50 years after Hammett's death, to the day. RIP, Joe Gores, and thanks for all the books.
October 6, 2009
Mercifully, this book does not contain any mystery-solving cats, brownie or cornbread recipes, or contemporary cliches. It is an old-fashioned, noir-ish, hard-boiled detective novel. And, I loved it.
I've enjoyed Dashiell Hammett's books, been intrigued by his relationship with Lillian Hellman, and am sorry that I am not better informed about his life. The fictional Hammett in Joe Gores' book was an interesting man whose character contained light, dark and every shade of gray. I loved his intelligence, his slight vulnerability, and his rock-solid moral core.
The book also gives us a wonderful sense of a vibrant and very corrupt California in the 1920's. I can't help but smile thinking of the detective/hero taking the streetcar instead of driving as he goes on dates or meets a contact in his investigation. What fun to time travel in this manner.
I've enjoyed Dashiell Hammett's books, been intrigued by his relationship with Lillian Hellman, and am sorry that I am not better informed about his life. The fictional Hammett in Joe Gores' book was an interesting man whose character contained light, dark and every shade of gray. I loved his intelligence, his slight vulnerability, and his rock-solid moral core.
The book also gives us a wonderful sense of a vibrant and very corrupt California in the 1920's. I can't help but smile thinking of the detective/hero taking the streetcar instead of driving as he goes on dates or meets a contact in his investigation. What fun to time travel in this manner.
February 24, 2023
Truly a page-turner, hard to put down.
We all know what those are like……I’ll just read one more chapter�.yeah, right.
San Francisco, 1928.
A city a hundred miles down the road from me.
A city I know and love so well.
My parents lived there before my dad was drafted to serve in WWII.
He worked at Winterland and Sutro Baths.
The city where my husband proposed to me at the top of a very windy Twin Peaks.
The city where almost exactly 5 years ago I was rushed to in an ambulance for lifesaving surgery performed by a brilliant surgeon to whom I will always be grateful.
And yet I believe that I still would have loved this book even if it had taken place in another city, one I don’t know and feel so connected to.
This book is just that good.
Some favorite passages:
�.He longed for one of his all-night sessions with the typewriter. A session in the fictional San Francisco of fog-bound streets and hard-minded victorious heroes, where he could control the blood and manipulate the men�..
Mulligan laid the receiver on the desk and went down the narrow room to the doorway of the inner, private office. He was short and strutting, his shoulders were narrow and his posture just slightly swaybacked, so he always walked as if he were about to start tap dancing.
He returned to his desk and hung up the phone noisily. All three of them knew he wasn’t bright enough to know things he wasn’t bright enough to know.
Sausalito was more than a Bohemian fishing village and railhead; it was also a zany blend of seaport, yachting center, tourist attraction, and artist colony—and focal point for rumrunners�.
“At high tide you can bring a whaleboat of rum right in under the pilings and unload it up through the trapdoors in the floor without any danger of being spotted from the street.�
At just seventeen minutes before two o’clock in the morning, the front door was buzzed open to admit Dashiell Hammett. His gray houndstooth jacket had three buttons and his charcoal slacks had a knife-edge crease. His black wing tips were freshly polished. He leaned slightly on the polished ebony cane in his right hand while telling the blue-chinned bouncer his pleasure.
“That way for the bar, sir.�
“Thank you, my good man.�
Regret. Because the tomorrow had come. The tomorrow that was the today and the yesterday and the forever and the never. The last, the only, the never-again.
We all know what those are like……I’ll just read one more chapter�.yeah, right.
San Francisco, 1928.
A city a hundred miles down the road from me.
A city I know and love so well.
My parents lived there before my dad was drafted to serve in WWII.
He worked at Winterland and Sutro Baths.
The city where my husband proposed to me at the top of a very windy Twin Peaks.
The city where almost exactly 5 years ago I was rushed to in an ambulance for lifesaving surgery performed by a brilliant surgeon to whom I will always be grateful.
And yet I believe that I still would have loved this book even if it had taken place in another city, one I don’t know and feel so connected to.
This book is just that good.
Some favorite passages:
�.He longed for one of his all-night sessions with the typewriter. A session in the fictional San Francisco of fog-bound streets and hard-minded victorious heroes, where he could control the blood and manipulate the men�..
Mulligan laid the receiver on the desk and went down the narrow room to the doorway of the inner, private office. He was short and strutting, his shoulders were narrow and his posture just slightly swaybacked, so he always walked as if he were about to start tap dancing.
He returned to his desk and hung up the phone noisily. All three of them knew he wasn’t bright enough to know things he wasn’t bright enough to know.
Sausalito was more than a Bohemian fishing village and railhead; it was also a zany blend of seaport, yachting center, tourist attraction, and artist colony—and focal point for rumrunners�.
“At high tide you can bring a whaleboat of rum right in under the pilings and unload it up through the trapdoors in the floor without any danger of being spotted from the street.�
At just seventeen minutes before two o’clock in the morning, the front door was buzzed open to admit Dashiell Hammett. His gray houndstooth jacket had three buttons and his charcoal slacks had a knife-edge crease. His black wing tips were freshly polished. He leaned slightly on the polished ebony cane in his right hand while telling the blue-chinned bouncer his pleasure.
“That way for the bar, sir.�
“Thank you, my good man.�
Regret. Because the tomorrow had come. The tomorrow that was the today and the yesterday and the forever and the never. The last, the only, the never-again.
August 24, 2021
The premise of this mystery is that Dashiell Hammett, struggling with writing The Dain Curse, alcoholism, and the break up of his marriage, becomes involved, at the behest of an old friend from Pinkerton days, with investigating corruption in the San Francisco police. There is lots of corruption, not just with the police, and the book sets up a gritty 1920s city complete with madams, "white" slavery, Chinatown, Italian restaurants, speakeasies, and rumrunners. Hammett is struggling not just with The Dane Curse, but with his next book, The Maltese Falcon, and is playing over in his head a book about a stand up guy (and crook) who won't give up on his mentor (The Glass Key). There is a South African chauffeur/bodyguard who speaks like a lethal Jeeves (although who really knows what Jeeves is capable of). The denouement revealed a couple of really evil-over-the-top villains (probably more Chandler than Hammett) that was a little much but still satisfying. The language in the book, written in 1975 and set in 1928, was not politically correct, probably even at the time of its writing the language was considered no more than "colorful," but fits the era. On the whole, the era was evoked well. However at the very beginning I felt it was more descriptions of clothing or slang thrown around to designate the setting, but then things settled down and the 1920s setting seemed more organic to the story. There are many subtle echoes of the Hammett oeuvre.
March 16, 2020
Not good at all. Very much a first novel and not at all worthy of Hammett's legacy. Skip it.
January 16, 2019
The mystery genre, over the last few decades, has been infested with the idea that historical figures make swell detectives. You know, people like the Prince of Wales, Enrico Caruso, Duke Ellington’s cat. This idea is usually quite wrong. But the thought of Dash Hammett, ex-PI turned great writer, solving the kill of another PI, was inspired. The resulting book is a lot of fun.
The plot is pretty ordinary —not that different from a Mike Hammer plot, to be honest. The characterization of Hammett though feels right. Since the novel is set in 1928, Hammett is a retired PI, and he makes a number of realistic mistakes throughout. The honesty of characterization is the reason to read. It is one of the few times I have liked this little sub-genre.
An epilogue, where the author talks about how this plot came to be and some of his sources, is a welcome addition.
The plot is pretty ordinary —not that different from a Mike Hammer plot, to be honest. The characterization of Hammett though feels right. Since the novel is set in 1928, Hammett is a retired PI, and he makes a number of realistic mistakes throughout. The honesty of characterization is the reason to read. It is one of the few times I have liked this little sub-genre.
An epilogue, where the author talks about how this plot came to be and some of his sources, is a welcome addition.
Read
November 3, 2022Dashiel Hammett is a brilliant writer not only because he wrote red harvest and the Maltese falcon but cause he paved the way for one my favorite authors to sweep on and change a whole genre..talking about raymond chandler ofc .. anyway I watched the 80's movie before reading joe gores on Hammett where the author is a sleuth in this novel and I liked both.
December 6, 2021
An incident in the life of Dash Hammett, as interpreted through the creative eye of Joe Gores, and a fine interpretation. Lots of political and police corruption, hypocrisy, intrigue and intrigue, and no idea of what is happening to the end. Recommended for anyone who enjoys 1920s crime fiction.
October 8, 2023
Hammett is the main character in this interesting historical novel. The plot is complicated but ultimately a bit unsatisfying.
December 13, 2024
⭐⭐�1/2
Read
August 5, 2011Joe Gores' admiration for Dashiell Hammett became a staple in his career, having also written a prequel to The Maltese Falcon. This admiration is appropriate given that Gores, just like Hammett, was a private detective turned author in San Francisco. In the afterword of "Hammett", Gores makes a point in how Hammett turned the pulp detective story from taboo entertainment in Black Mask magazine, into serious literature, a feat that has baffled critics and writers since. Hammett was unlike other pulp writers in that he was an investigator learning how to write, instead of a writer learning how to investigate. Gores knows of this struggle and makes it his protagonist's inner struggle throughout the book. An admirable tribute to the noir legend, but not without its faults.
Gores crafts a complex and relevant mystery surrounding political corruption in 1928. The story is exquisitely crafted, and the last fifty pages contain more twists than a 1950s dance hall. I was in awe.
However, "Hammett" suffers from the same problem that the other Gores novel I've read, "Cases", suffers from. The prose is so deeply detailed that it slows the pace of the story almost to a halt. Every once in a while comes a scene gripping enough that it flies by, but soon after Gores spends unnecessary time describing clothes of characters or writing much too lofty descriptions of their looks and actions.
Hammett as the protagonist of this fictional story is interesting, but ultimately, distracting. Gores periodically goes off on tangents with factual anecdotes of Hammett's childhood, all of which do not help in his investigation. I was waiting for Hammett to find something in his writing that became a key to helping him solve the case, but it never came. This makes the idea of Hammett the retired detective as protagonist irrelevant, and the novel, I think, would benefit more by Hammett working as a writer/detective rather than simply a former detective thrown back into his old profession.
Overall, I admire Joe Gores, but haven't yet read a novel of his that I've felt is on the same level as his inspirations. This novel is worth reading for fans of well-crafted mystery stories. However, the work of Hammett himself takes precedent, and I don't think even Joe Gores would disagree.
Gores crafts a complex and relevant mystery surrounding political corruption in 1928. The story is exquisitely crafted, and the last fifty pages contain more twists than a 1950s dance hall. I was in awe.
However, "Hammett" suffers from the same problem that the other Gores novel I've read, "Cases", suffers from. The prose is so deeply detailed that it slows the pace of the story almost to a halt. Every once in a while comes a scene gripping enough that it flies by, but soon after Gores spends unnecessary time describing clothes of characters or writing much too lofty descriptions of their looks and actions.
Hammett as the protagonist of this fictional story is interesting, but ultimately, distracting. Gores periodically goes off on tangents with factual anecdotes of Hammett's childhood, all of which do not help in his investigation. I was waiting for Hammett to find something in his writing that became a key to helping him solve the case, but it never came. This makes the idea of Hammett the retired detective as protagonist irrelevant, and the novel, I think, would benefit more by Hammett working as a writer/detective rather than simply a former detective thrown back into his old profession.
Overall, I admire Joe Gores, but haven't yet read a novel of his that I've felt is on the same level as his inspirations. This novel is worth reading for fans of well-crafted mystery stories. However, the work of Hammett himself takes precedent, and I don't think even Joe Gores would disagree.
October 6, 2015
Before he was a novelist writing about private investigators, Dashiell Hammett actually was a private investigator for nigh on ten years. Before he was a novelist inspired by Dashiell Hammett, Joe Gores was a private investigator for just over ten years, a career move that he says was inspired by reading Dashiell Hammett.
Who better then to write a novel where the protagonist is Dashiell Hammett, where we get to see him as both a novelist and a private investigator?
Gores dates the story to 1928, a pivotal year for Hammett where he had just decided to become a full-time writer and was on the verge of finishing and publishing both The Dain Curse and his most famous and enduring work, The Maltese Falcon.
The setting is of course San Francisco, and it's lovingly recreated by Gores, including depictions of where Hammett really lived and the streets and alleys that he used for locations in his own novels.
The cast includes all the staples of a Hammett novel, from femme fatales to vain, corrupt businessmen, policemen and city officials. The plot is suitably labyrinthine and almost incomprehensible, vice and hypocrisy go hand in hand as the murders stack up.
Throughout it all Hammett stands alone just like Sam Spade or the Continental Op, as the lone man of honour, with the strength to conquer his own weaknesses and avoid the "evil".
As you would expect from a more contemporary book, the "evil" is more graphically represented than in the source material - although some of Hammett's stuff reads pretty blood-thirsty even now - and I think I caught flashes of the movie Chinatown in here too.
A worthy tribute to the progenitor of hard-boiled detective fiction, which has given me the urge to read Hammett again.
Who better then to write a novel where the protagonist is Dashiell Hammett, where we get to see him as both a novelist and a private investigator?
Gores dates the story to 1928, a pivotal year for Hammett where he had just decided to become a full-time writer and was on the verge of finishing and publishing both The Dain Curse and his most famous and enduring work, The Maltese Falcon.
The setting is of course San Francisco, and it's lovingly recreated by Gores, including depictions of where Hammett really lived and the streets and alleys that he used for locations in his own novels.
The cast includes all the staples of a Hammett novel, from femme fatales to vain, corrupt businessmen, policemen and city officials. The plot is suitably labyrinthine and almost incomprehensible, vice and hypocrisy go hand in hand as the murders stack up.
Throughout it all Hammett stands alone just like Sam Spade or the Continental Op, as the lone man of honour, with the strength to conquer his own weaknesses and avoid the "evil".
As you would expect from a more contemporary book, the "evil" is more graphically represented than in the source material - although some of Hammett's stuff reads pretty blood-thirsty even now - and I think I caught flashes of the movie Chinatown in here too.
A worthy tribute to the progenitor of hard-boiled detective fiction, which has given me the urge to read Hammett again.
July 5, 2022
An alternate history that suggests that ’s ideas for some of his mystery novels (, ) came not from his imagination, but from his own experiences before he became a mystery writer while he was working for the Pinkerton agency. Gores’s historical and social details of the San Francisco setting are very good. Moreover, the style of the writing is very similar to that Hammett used in his own works.
Acquired Mar 2, 2007
G & A Book Exchange, London, Ontario
Acquired Mar 2, 2007
G & A Book Exchange, London, Ontario
November 26, 2008
I have to say, so far, more Mickey Spillane than Dashiell Hammett-- the cop kicking the rapist's testicles in so hard that his spinal column breaks being exhibit A. Also, I know that I'm deficient as regards attention (Doctor told me so), but this book loses me every couple of pages. What happened? What?
Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I was expecting at all.
The Nouvelle Vague, incredibly enthused by low-budget American filmmaking precisely because it so often contravened established rules, and thereby opened new windows onto what could be effected by cinema, they then adopted as aesthetic decisions what had been either necessities or mistakes on the part of their American heroes. I see this novel possibly being like those Americans.
But then, it could just be inept.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I was expecting at all.
The Nouvelle Vague, incredibly enthused by low-budget American filmmaking precisely because it so often contravened established rules, and thereby opened new windows onto what could be effected by cinema, they then adopted as aesthetic decisions what had been either necessities or mistakes on the part of their American heroes. I see this novel possibly being like those Americans.
But then, it could just be inept.
January 12, 2013
This book - which I prefer to 's own work - is a grand specimen of the one-last-job retired-crime-fighter trope, featuring America's founding noir writer as the retiree. Clear-headed and straightforward in language (which Hammett wasn't), it is written by yet another retired P.I., with respect for both the myth and the reality of American crime. Entertaining and twisty enough for crime fans without being artificial about it.
Its eye toward California's bizarre early-20th-century history makes it something of a more upbeat .
Its eye toward California's bizarre early-20th-century history makes it something of a more upbeat .
May 23, 2009
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.
March 15, 2012
Gores takes the real life Dashiell Hammett - ex-PI and crime writer - and creates a fictional scenario where he is embroiled in murder, child prostitution, police corruption, and gangland revenge. The novel works well - the life of Hammett is skilfully and effectively woven into the plot, although equally you need no knowledge of Hammett to enjoy the book. Ultimately it's a passable and entertaining pulp crime thriller and good for a quick read if no more than that.
January 2, 2009
As Gore uses Hammett as his main character in 1928 at a time when he was mostly a writer but not too far removed from detecting.
As I had just finished reading Nolan’s book that uses Hammett as a character I decided this was a good follow up.
I liked this, nothing rang false to me and I look forward to reading Gore’s other book I have.
As I had just finished reading Nolan’s book that uses Hammett as a character I decided this was a good follow up.
I liked this, nothing rang false to me and I look forward to reading Gore’s other book I have.
March 7, 2009
Gores is a good writer in the spirit of Hammett. An ambitious undertaking casting Hammett as the dectective, and it works o.k. It's helpful if you've read Hammetts Continental Op. stories and they get referenced by Gores throughout the tale. A pretty good read.
September 1, 2016
What would happen if Dashiell Hammett was pulled back into the detective business while trying to write "The Maltese Falcon"? Gores re-creates San Francisco of the 1920s, where the town is run by the cops, the crooks, and the big rich, and everything is for sale.
February 20, 2019
Great idea of Hammett solving a mystery himself as a former Pinkerton.
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