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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 18 |
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Before the 'black bird' case, Sam Spade was very busy
of TheColumnists.com
Just as Robert B. Parker, a lifelong fan of Raymond Chandler's mysteries, wrote an authorized sequel to Chandler's "The Big Sleep," acclaimed mystery writer Joe Gores has dared to write a prequel to Dashiell Hammett's classic "The Maltese Falcon."
Gores, too, obtained permission from the Hammett estate and, in fact, shares the copyright to "Spade & Archer" (Knopf, $24) with Josephine Hammett Marshall, Hammett's only surviving daughter. And it obviously was a match made in mystery Heaven. "Spade & Archer" is a superb mystery that feels as if Hammett were looking over Gores' shoulder all the way and nodding his approval.
I doubt if anybody else but Gores could have pulled this one off. He, like Hammett, is a former private eye--and he knows the San Francisco Bay Area intimately, which makes you feel he is walking the same mean streets Hammett walked in the late 1920s while imagining the greatest adventure of private eye Sam Spade's career. Gores also wrote the best-seller "Hammett," in which he imagined the author solving a mystery in his real-life days as a private eye in San Francisco before he turned fully to his writing. That novel was turned into the 1983 film of the same name by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, aided by Francis Ford Coppola, with Frederic Forrest as Dashiell Hammett.
Let there be no mistake about one thing: Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" is one of the greatest mystery novels of all time. It defined forever the American style of detective mystery and Sam Spade remains the definitive "hard-boiled" private dick. It is still a brisk, exciting read and is a "must" for anyone interested in mystery.
Though the title suggests the story is about the work done by Sam Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, that's really peripheral to the story. What Gores does is make sure we understand Spade was the real heart of the partnership and that Archer was not a man of ingrained principles. It also sets up the love affair Sam was having with Archer's beautiful wife before the calamitous events that involve Archer at the beginning of "The Maltese Falcon."
Early in this book, Gores shows us Spade in the earliest days of his one-man detective agency. He knows Archer at that time, but Archer is working for the Continental Detective Agency as their "op" in Spokane, Washington. That was Hammett's make believe agency that fans know to represent the real Pinkerton agency that employed Hammett. We're practically with Spade from Day One of his private eye business, even before he hires the plucky 17-year-old Effie Perrine as his receptionist/secretary.
The story covers the core middle years of the 1920s, starting with Spade's involvement in a puzzling theft of gold from a cargo ship that makes port in San Francisco. The mastermind behind that daring and clever theft is the link that ties Spade to the other major cases of the novel, ending with the search for $250,000 supposedly stolen from the campaign funds of the Chinese political figure Sun Yat-sen. By that time, Spade and Archer are working together, but Spade has growing suspicions about the honesty of his new partner.
For a Bay Area native like me, "Spade & Archer" is catnip. It's packed with fascinating details about what San Francisco, Sausalito and other Bay Area locales were actually like in the 1920s. The feeling of authenticity about it is overwhelming. Gores also mixes in several real-life personalities from that era when bootleggers and their buddies were such a mainstream in crime circles and the warring between unions and the shipping trade was especially vicious.
And everything you learn about Spade's character dovetails perfectly with the Hammett novel to follow in 1929, down to the point where, on the final page, Effie Perrine tells Spade, "There's a girl wants to see you. Her name's Wonderly."
Though mystery lovers certainly know Gores, who has won three prestigious Edgar awards in three different categories--Best First Novel, Best Short Story and Best Episode in A TV Series--he still seems to me to be under-appreciated for his great skills as an author of brilliant detective novels that throb with his real-life knowledge of what it's like to be a P.I.
I might add that Gores is a very charming and likeable guy. I met him long ago at a mystery conference conducted at a remote mountain hideaway in Santa Cruz County in California that used to be frequented by bootleggers and gangsters. He was there with Brian Garfield, author of "Death Wish," and I spent a long, endlessly entertaining afternoon listening to them swapping marvelous stories about the world of mystery. It helped put me on the mystery road for the rest of my career.
Anyway, I'm happy to report that Gores is still working at the top of his game and "Spade & Archer" is a tribute both to the great author who created these characters and the great author who has given them renewed life.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The book cover is courtesy of Knopf. This column first posted April 6, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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