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Prequel Deftly Nails Private Eye

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By ROGER K. MILLER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 15, 2009

"Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,'" by Joe Gores (Knopf, $24)

In "Spade & Archer," crime novelist and Dashiell Hammett expert Joe Gores has crafted an expert "prequel" to "The Maltese Falcon," the only Hammett novel to feature his famous San Francisco private detective, Sam Spade. Gores slots his prequel directly into the original by having Spade set up his own shop after resigning from the Continental Detective Agency upon finishing the "Flitcraft case" - a case Spade mentions in the early pages of "Falcon." There are many such nuggets of connection and homage to "Falcon" in here.

"Archer" is, of course, Miles Archer, Spade's partner, who early on in "Falcon" turns up murdered. His title prominence notwithstanding, Archer does not figure prominently in the narrative until the last of its three sections, set in 1928, when he and Spade sign their partnership agreement. The first two sections are set in 1921 and 1925.

Spade may be Archer's partner, but he is hardly his friend. With Archer's wife, Iva, it is a different story. The love affair Spade has with her in "Falcon" has its beginnings in "S&A," where its nature is more fully explored, if not explained.

In fact, if, as Gores says, the mystery in "Falcon" is not about the Maltese Falcon - the search for the jewel-encrusted bird statuette that drives the plot - but about who killed Miles Archer, then it may be conjectured that the mystery about "S&A" resides not in its plot, but in Iva and Spade's relationship.

The lively plot involves, initially, a search for a rich man's wayward son. This turns into a seven-year investigation that takes on dangerous accretions as the years go by: the theft of gold sovereigns from a ship; the suspicious suicide of a banker and the insurance money going to his widow; the laundering of bootleggers' money; Sun Yat-sen's illegitimate daughter; and three mysterious, unseen men.

Moreover, the characters' interestingness is as appealing as in "Falcon," where they are deeper, fuller and realer than in Hammett's other novels.Then there is the Hammett style, one that rests on precision in describing scenes. Any writer can pile on detail, but such particularity combined with the characters' utter, stark freshness produced something unique - perhaps, as Hammett scholar Richard Layman has said, "America's first existential novel." It is another quality Gores has captured.

"Spade & Archer" closes by picking up the opening scenes of "Falcon." Do I detect the possibility of a sequel - even a series - in the offing?

Roger K. Miller, a novelist and freelance writer and editor, writes the blog graustark.blogspot.com.

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