A quick and flowing read compared to Carrion Comfort by Simmons! Not everybody's cup of tea. Sam Spade's attitude towards women (even those he claims he loves) is decidedly mysoginistic by today's standards, and by a long shot. There are three developed female characters (plus G's daughter, who only appears on a couple of pages), but they seem to be very stereotyped, and not much real humans. Miss Wonderly (to use her first alias) is the caricature of a femme fatalle, who uses her physical beauty and sexual favors to manipulate and conquer men to use for her own purposes, while not shying from putting a bullet in their brains when they are of no more use to her. Iva Archer is the stereotypical suburban housewives whose feelings for her husband died off long time ago (if they even existed beyond her imagination and wishful thinking) and now wants to reinvent herself and get a chance for a fresh start with an affair with her husband's business partner. Effie is the gregarious secretary stereotype, who is street smart but still has deep feelings, especially for men in positions of authority, like her boss.
Hammett has a quick and flowing style, especially well crafted dialogues, quick proceeding plot and interesting twists, however his descriptions of every detail of people's clothes and the expressions in their eyes or the twisting of their lips - becomes way too much already after the first 1/4 of the book. There is an interesting twist in the end when Spade tells out who killed his partner Archer, but the preceding part of the book reads more like an adventure novel (plus hard-boiled) than a detective one. The way the Falcon just "walks" into Spade's office is a real letdown, and doesn't give the anti-hero any chance to prove his professed detective qualities.
If people are looking for a likeable character with whom to identify or "feel for" in books - then this one is definitely not one of them. There are no likeable characters. All of them are flawed, nasty, mean and sleazy in completely unlikeable ways. Spade, even for an anti-hero, is completely unlikeable. He is a brute, bully, misogynist, homophobe, racist, liar, swindler and many more choice epithets. However, he is a successful detective and a good reader of people's personalities (summary: they are all rotten).
Although, I appreciate the effort Hammett put into creating Spade, and since Hammett was a private dick himself for a number of years and this would be how an ideal "real-life" gumshoe looks like, I still prefer Philip Marlowe, who is more thoughtful, more introvert, more philosophical, a bit better with women (not bedding the, but treating them) and definitely more fully developed.
The movie is also good, but the Spade there is different from what Hammett wrote in the book (John Huston rewrote many parts for his script for the movie). From the physical side Spade is supposed to be over 6 feet, blonde, scheming, with a sly smile on his face at all times. Bogart is 5'6'' (with shoes) , dark, direct, and with a poker face most of the time. Spade in the book calls all his women "angel", but Bogart in the movie calls all of the "sweetheart".
Anyways, a good book, and a perennial classic, but I am going to re-read "The Big Sleep" again. By the way, Bogart plays exactly the same character in "Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" although they are two different detectives. Well, to come to think about it, Bogart plays exactly the same character in every movie he's been - himself.
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