The Maltese Falcon

"Well, sir, I grant you that's one way of doing it, but-"

"'But' hell!" Spade said. "It's the only way." His eyes were hot and earnest under a reddening forehead. The bruise on his temple was liver-colored. "I know what I'm talking about. I've been through it all before and expect to go through it again. At one time or another I've had to tell everybody from the Supreme Court down to go to hell, and I've got away with it. I got away with it because I never let myself forget that a day of reckoning was coming. I never forget that when the day of reckoning comes I want to be all set to march into headquarters pushing a victim in front of me, saying 'Here, you chumps, is your criminal!' As long as I can do that I can put my thumb to my nose and wriggle my fingers at all the laws in the book. The first time I can't do it my name's Mud. There hasn't been a first time yet. This isn't going to be it. That's flat."

After reading this book, one of the supposed hallmarks of the genre, I have to wonder if maybe I don't actually like noir fiction as much as I like the idea of it. The aesthetics of rainy city streets where danger lurks in every dark alley way? Awesome! Femmes fatales with deadly ulterior motives? Here for it! Mobsters and whole cast of walking trope side characters? Where do I sign up?

But when I sat down to read this book, what I expected and what I got ended up being different. Yes, there's the dated content that comes with the territory that I know to expect going into it: women getting slapped across the face at the first sign of being difficult, ethnic minorities portrayed as effeminate and inept, casual homophobia, etc. But it's more than just that. I want a fun mystery with a witty-but-humble detective who manages to navigate all the twists and turns that the (insert city here) underground throws at them by the skin of their teeth. What I got here instead was a protagonist waltzing through the plot with God Mode enabled and who almost actively tried to suck all the enjoyment out of an otherwise interesting premise.

Sam Spade (who is frequently described as having a "V-shaped face", so I just had a mental image Waluigi the whole time) was a uniquely frustrating character to be tied to. At times he was apathetically enduring the very valid concerns and complaints of those around him, and at others he was flying off the handle over the slightest transgression, real or imagined. He casually disarmed gunmen and hired goons left and right, so nothing ever really felt like a threat and the stakes never felt real. And to me the cardinal sin of storytelling is a disinterested character; if the characters don't care about what's happening to them, why should I? He was probably written with the intention of being cool, collected, always-in-control kind of guy that occasionally lost his nerve because, hey, nobody's perfect. But instead he just came across as the 1930's version of the Navy Seal copypasta, like the author was trying so hard to write a badass and instead delivered a sociopath. I kept finding myself rooting for the bad guys and even the cops, and you never want that.

There is a good story buried in this book that would have been able to breathe and thrive in Spade's absence. The saving grace of this book were the last two chapters, when the relations between all the background characters start to result in interesting last-minute changes in dynamics and alliances, but I found it to be too little too late. Any enjoyment I derived from this book was doused by a singular character that I wanted reach through into the pages, shake by the shoulders and shout, "You are insufferable! Just be normal!"

Reading pulpy noir is so fun and seductive and delicious that you can whip right past how appallingly sexist and retrograde it can feel. Or you can not care about all of that and then I'd wonder if you hate women as much as Sam Spade clearly does.

Mr. Hammett spent the better part of his life romantically involved with Lillian Hellman, a mid-century force of nature, author of many of the greatest plays of the American theater and a survivor of the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s. I doubt Ms. Hellman would have put up with the kind of misogyny we see here in her lover's protagonist: Sam Spade only sees women as objects to be kissed, banged, lectured to or slapped.

Ok, so know that gong in. Since this is perhaps the most famous noir novel of all time, you probably know the rest already: A murder, a femme fatale, men in black raincoats and shadowy glances across darkened streets. But its famous because it perfected most of those cliches and made them so tangible you feel as though you could visit the Stockton Tunnel in San Francisco and, at its base, find the body of the first victim of "Maltese Falcon" still lying on the pavement below.

If noir and its tics are your thing, this is the only place to start. And if you love San Francisco, that's even better. The mystery and seduction of perhaps America's most photographed city laid down in "The Maltese Falcon" holds on to us, nearly 100 years after Bridget O'Shaunessy walked into Sam Spade's office that morning.