Jan 11, 2016 08:44
What I've Just Finished Reading
I haven't seen it in many years, but The Maltese Falcon was one of my favorite movies from childhood; I loved the mythical golden bird that may not even exist anymore under its protective enamel, and Sydney Greenstreet's never-ending list of things he doesn't trust in a man, and the great line, "I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon."
Reading the book was an odd experience because, except for a lot of weirdly vivid eye colors, it deviated so little from my memories of the movie that it felt like a transcript, not a novel. Not surprisingly, Hammett wrote the screenplay and pasted all his own best lines in (plus a few extra; Greenstreet's best line seems to have been movie-only).
Sam Spade is an oddly opaque character, which I think is deliberate. I found his constant derisive chuckling plays a lot better as a performance by an actor than it does on the page. The descriptions of characters and their actions are highly meticulous and a little alien, as though Hammett were making notes for a Galactic Cosmographic Society study on Earth Detection and its Gestures. I think it must have been a startling prose style in 1930, but it may be suffering from its own success a little now.
What I'm Reading Now
Love Lies Bleeding by Edmund Crispin. It's not bad at all, even if the title pun is a groaner. Gervase Fen has just shown up, less actively unlikeable (so far) than he was in The Moving Toyshop, and the humor is less manic and forced -- it helps that it takes place in a school, with plenty of low-hanging fruit in the form of classroom discussions, etc., but the book also feels a little better constructed in general. And because it's not Fen's school, there's no opportunity for me to get annoyed by how indifferent a teacher Fen is. Two teachers have been killed, a chemistry cupboard has been broken into, and a student is missing. Is there a connection? Almost certainly!
What I Plan to Read Next
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett -- this one was also made into a movie, but I haven't seen it, so hopefully I will be better able to read it on its own terms.
Also, did you know that someone wrote a Porfiry Petrovich mystery? The Gentle Axe by R. N. Morris is a new case for Crime and Punishment's indefatigable detective, apparently. I found it today while cleaning up the mystery shelves at work -- I don't know when I'll read it, but probably sometime this year.
murder mondays,
dashiell hammett,
edmund crispin