Sadly I think my excitement to read Hammett's The Maltese Falcon may have gotten the best of me--and the novel. There I was going around telling everyone..."they say its the best detective novel ever written!!" Well, it is good, of course, but best ever? The real weakness for me was all that convoluted secrecy. I know what you are saying..."Amber, it's a DETECTIVE novel, you aren't supposed to know everything!!" I understand but the whole book I was very patient about waiting to be let in on what was really going on. And then finally everything gets wrapped up in the last 20-30 pages and you realize, you pretty much new everything that was going along already. Yes, there is a bit more information but there wasn't enough for what I had built it up to be.Now that I am thinking about it, I cannot believe I went around telling everyone it was (supposed to be) the best detective novel...obviously I am going to give that title to Crime and Punishment. My favorite of all the novels ever written (talk about a title that is hard to live up to)!!
After all this negative talk I feel I should say it was a fun book to read. And very cinematic in its nature. The setting was always shrouded by cigarettes and sexy women with bright red lipstick. And then you have the suave and handsome hero who is always just barely escaping the law. It is hard to resist. If you do not go into the book thinking it is going to be one of the greatest novels you will ever read I have no doubt you will really enjoy it.
And for those of you that are interested (and are in the small minority of people who live near by) the movie is now second in our queue, which means we will be watching it sometime next week!
3 comments:
When people say it is the best detective novel ever they are not considering Crime and Punishment a detective novel. I think you would be hard pressed to make C&P a detective novel since it is not about the detective or his unraveling a mystery. It is a crime novel but there is no mystery - not even regarding Raskolnikov's actions.
Among what most people would consider mystery novels (books by Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Patricia Highsmith, Mike Hammer, Elmore Leonard) The Maltese Falcon if fighting for the top. Your post got me back into reading pulp detective novels and I would be at pains to pick the best one. Is it Maltese? Big Sleep? Double Indemnity? Talented Mr. Ripley? I can't choose they are all so good.
One thing I have noticed in pulp novels is that there is little to no concern over plot. This seems strange since the authors were so criticized by contemporaries for being plot focused or driven. When you get to the end of most books the mystery might be solved but we have no more insight then we did at the beginning. The point of these books is not solution but a demonstration of futility - that no matter how hard one tries to discover them there are no more satisfactory answers then there were at the beginning.
I just finished The Big Sleep and it reinforces these view. Though by the end we know who the killer is we realize that we knew all along. All of Marlowe's hunting turned nothing up. All that happened was a number of people got killed in the pursuit of a mystery that was more self-evident than mysterious. It is the waste of life in pursuit of "ultimate knowledge," the futility of good intentions to accomplish good deeds that these men (and one woman) rail against.
With this as a focus, plot and character mean nothing. They could be rotated out. Marlowe could be Spade could be Huff. (The only exception to this is Tom Ripley, which might make Talented Mr. Ripley the best of all mystery novels since it combines futility of action with concern for character who in fact is a murderer). With character and plot as simple vehicles, easily switched for one another, style comes to the forefront. This elevates the novels into the realm of formalism, which is why they adapt so well to the screen. The shadows, the angles, the hard faces and harsh colors, the dead bodies splayed on the floor in their thickening blood. All this, with no person or reason behind it all, is the form of futility, the form of a world in which we look for meaning behind our lives and the actions of our lives and yet find nothing. The falcon is a fake and all that remains is to accept the big sleep that ends all things.
Props to Michler for being much more apt and concise in expressing my reading of Hammett.
And I suppose I should also say its my bad for so easily interchaning "Crime" and "Detective" novels with each other. They are different genres, though often they are combined into one, (ex. Hammett being both Crime and Detective) therefore I am not going to feel too guilty about my incorrect description of C&P.
well said.
but Bleak House may be the best crime/detective/mystery novel around. It is not of the genre of pulp/mystery but it has all the elements and more. Go Dickens!
All that said by my brilliant wife, I'm very excited to read the Maltese Falcon. I would read bits of it over her shoulder on the train, and the dialogue was so badassed. that's enough for me.
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