I enjoyed this read; Hammett has a fast-paced writing style, he doesn´t linger at anything that doesn´t drive the story forward. I confess some of the slang was a bit hard to get, and sometimes I just didn´t get the banter. Likely, I missed the best jokes, but what can you do? I enjoyed it well enough, but not so much that I will be looking for the rest of them; I understand Hammett also wrote some short stories about the main characters, Nick and Nora Charles.
However, I checked out some of the films that was made in the 30´s and 40´s with William Powell and Myrna Loy, and became so infatuated with them that I ordered a four-film-box. A good detective story with a bit of humour is never wrong on a Friday night.
Thanks for the hat tip :) I think the only other book I've read by Hammett is Red Harvest. That was adapted for a film I've not seen, and was reported to be the inspiration for Kurosawa's Yojimbo. I love the Sam Spade character & the film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon. Like you, I'm not looking for other books by him, but he does seem to have created plots & characters that inspired film makers.
ReplyDeleteTo whom honour is due and so on. I read "The Maltese Falcon" in translation many years ago and I really like Bogart as Spade. Well, I like Bogart as anything. And it looks like the Powell & Loy team got the humour across in a way that works better for us, here, now. Hammett´s characters are as much a part of the modern psyche as Austen´s, I think.
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