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    Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's the Maltese Falcon
    Unavailable
    Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's the Maltese Falcon
    Unavailable
    Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's the Maltese Falcon
    Audiobook8 hours

    Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's the Maltese Falcon

    Written by Joe Gores

    Narrated by Scott Brick

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When Sam Spade gets drawn into the Maltese Falcon case, we know what to expect: straight talk, hard questions, no favors, and no way for anyone to get underneath the protective shell he wears like a second skin. We know that his late partner, Miles Archer, was a son of a bitch; that Spade is sleeping with Archer's wife, Iva; that his tomboyish secretary, Effie Perine, is the only innocent in his life. What we don't know is how Spade became who he is. Spade & Archer completes the picture.

    1921: Spade sets up his own agency in San Francisco and clients quickly start coming through the door. The next seven years will see him dealing with booze runners, waterfront thugs, stowaways, banking swindlers, gold smugglers, bumbling cops, and the illegitimate daughter of Sun Yat-sen; with murder, other men's mistresses, and long-missing money. He'll bring in Archer as a partner, though it was Archer who stole his girl while he was fighting in World War I. He'll tangle with a villain who never loses his desire to make Spade pay big for ruining what should've been the perfect crime. And he'll fall in love-though it won't turn out for the best. It never does with dames . . .

    Spade & Archer is a gritty, pitch-perfect, hard-boiled audiobook-the work of a master mystery writer-destined to become a classic in its own right.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 10, 2009
    ISBN9780739382011
    Unavailable
    Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's the Maltese Falcon

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    Reviews for Spade & Archer

    3.5/5

    97 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A prequel to Hammett's seminal hard boiled detective novel, the book details several cases over a number of years, held together as you might expect by a sinister thread. The plot is more convoluted than Hammett ever dreamed of, but the narrative and dialogue should satisfy most fans. The real fun for me was watching Spade first meeting characters we know from The Maltese Falcon, and watching him grow and change into himself. I thought it was a first rate read, and a special treat for any fans of the original.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this homage to noir fiction, and it's obvious that the author is a devoted fan to the genre. While it wasn't written in the style normally associated with Hammett, it did stay true to the characters and settings which made it an enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      "Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon" by Joe Gores is first rate and a real addition to the tradition of the hard boiled detective genre. Gores, a noted Hammett scholar and Edgar Award-winning novelist, got authorization from the Hammett estate for this novel. I am suspicious of "authorized works" because authorized novels have been disappointing in the past and tend to be bland and less than creative in the name of preserving the memory of some long dead person. Gore's work is fortunately anything but bland and is in the Hammett style.

      This prequel begins seven years before Joel Cairo, Casper Guttman et al cross paths with Spade. Sam is a young man when the story begins in 1921 but he already has that special toughness we learned to love in the Maltese Falcon. Spade recovers part of a haul of gold stolen from a ship. The missing gold, the mastermind behind the heist, and a litany of characters, some of whom we know from the Falcon crop up throughout the novel weaving an interesting plot that plays itself out to a Hammett like conclusion all the while building the backstory on Spade himself. We are introduced to Miles Archer, his cheating wife Iva, the incompetent bully cop Dundy, his friendly, professional subordinate Tom Polhaus, and smart and adoring secretary Effie Perine. Unfortunately we don't learn a lot about this well know cast of characters but through them we come to know Sam Spade.

      The original's gritty dialogue is back. It's as though were transported to the 1920's once again. No matter who he talks to Spade is short and to the point. The reader can feel the delivery Bogart would have given these lines. Gores delights the reader familiar Hammett with quotes from the Maltese Falcon and references to other Hammett works.

      Spade & Archer is wonderful novel. Its inventive plot is entertaining and moves the story forward all the while craftily teaching us about a classic character, Sam Spade. This book is well worth the read.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this book and noticed I was defending it to myself. The descriptions were all unnecessarily "almost" or "just under", the Bay Area geography required outside knowledge, and the characters were barely enough to function for the plot. Fun, though.
    • 5/5
      Really enjoyable.Made me want to watch The Maltese Falcon again.
    • 4/5
      Not a bad book, but a little disappointing. Despite the title, Archer is a minor character at best, seemingly shoehorned into a story that should have been expressly designed to feature him. Gores does manage to provide a reason for Effie's endless loyalty to Sam, but for the most part, the book seems to act as almost a vindication for Spade, revealing him as a fundamentally decent and virtuous man who comes to have a deeply cynical outlook on a corrupt world.

      I suppose it's inevitable when approaching a book like this to imagine one's own spin on the material, but with the exception of Effie, I do feel that Gores legitimately missed his target here. The motive force of the novel should have been the relationship between Spade and Archer, with Effie and Archer's wife tugging on them from the sidelines, rather than focusing on a woman and criminal invented from whole cloth.
    • 3/5
      I think I liked it as much as I liked the Maltese Falcon - which is to say that it was okay to read, but not as good as I was originally led to believe from all the hype.I don't think that Sam Spade in this book is the same fellow as in the original - it's clear the author tried to replicate Sam, but it seemed as though there was just too much "effort" in Sam's reponses when the real Sam would have been such a cool cucumber that his responses would just glide off the page, not have to be spelled out quite as distinctly.I guess this book is more like 3 stories brought together into one, but with only one conclusion - at the end of the book. I'm not sure why... it's not like dragging out the book to cover 7 years made much difference in what happened in the story, so it seems like a lot of work for no pay off.Archer isn't in it very long (but he's not in the original very long either, is he)... I liked the backfill on him and can see why Sam didn't really care if Archer died. I'm glad I finished it, but won't be picking up any more of Gores work based on this one.
    • 5/5
      Full disclosure: 1. I’m a Dashiell Hammett fan. 2. I’m a Joe Gores fan. 3. I live in Marin County and worked in San Francisco for 30 years. Bearing all of these predispositions in mind, it would be pretty remarkable if I was anything but enthusiastic about Gores’ Spade & Archer; the Prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. I loved it. Gores writes like a reincarnated Hammett. He’s had practice, having penned the novel Hammett 35 years ago. A good, convoluted plot involving many of the characters we meet in The Maltese Falcon – Effie Perine, Miles and Iva Archer, Dundy and Polhaus for a start – presents a very plausible backstory for Sam Spade in the years 1921-1928.For a Bay Area resident, what makes this book even more delicious is the local color, the glimpse of San Francisco and environs as they were nearly a century ago. Nothing seemed out of place or time to me. Spade & Archer wraps you in a foggy cocoon and transports you to San Francisco in the Twenties. I wanted to stay so much that I’ve put The Maltese Falcon and Hammett in my “to be read” pile.
    • 3/5
      A serviceable thriller. I became annoyed at the author's tendency to have the characters constantly explain the 1920's environment to us. Lot's of "Oh look, that's the so-and-so building where so-and-so happened!" This is either not up to Dashiell Hammett's writing standard (for instance, a room is lazily described as "virtually empty"), or Hammett isn't as good as I remember.
    • 3/5
      Detective Sam Spade has become an archetypal character in American popular culture…the hard-bitten private eye beating the gritty streets of the city in search of a justice he isn’t even sure exists, a fool for the femme fatale. But have you ever wondered how Sam Spade became Sam Spade? Well, even if you haven’t, this well-written prequel to Hammett’s 'The Maltese Falcon' is a definite pleaser. The author, Joe Gores, is a former private eye himself, and it shows in the finely tuned series of steps his Spade takes to solve the cases presented to him. Over the course of seven years, we see Sam leave the Continental Detective Agency to start on his own, meet innocent young secretary Effie Perine, match wits again and again with a master criminal who always seems to escape at the last minute, and take on dim-witted Miles Archer as a partner in his agency and Archer’s wife Iva as a partner in his bed. Extremely well-written with pitch-perfect hard-boiled style, 'Spade and Archer' is a delight for fans of Hammett old and new.
    • 4/5
      I have not read "The Maltese Falcon", so I did not know what to expect. That said, I really enjoyed the novel. Sam Spade leaves Continental and opens his own PI office. He hires Effie Perine as his secretary and starts investigating cases. There is a villan who runs through 3 cases and eludes Spade. Why it is named "Spade & Archer", I have no idea. Archer is hardly in the novel and only used as a way to get his wife, Spade's lover, into the San Francisco area. The 1920 language, prices, fashions, and decor really adds to the story. I definitely plan to read "The Maltese Falcon".
    • 5/5
      In this prequel to The Maltese Falcon, Joe Gores does an excellent job creating a believable history of private detectives Samuel Spade and Miles Archer. Mr. Gores captures Dashiell Hammett's voice perfectly and, in some respects, even does a better job with Spade and company. There are three parts to this book, each focusing on a case that has a common thread, although the reader doesn't know the full extent until the end of the book. Although the book is called Spade and Archer, the focus is squarely on Spade, and shows how the two eventually became partners, leading the reader right up to the Maltese Falcon.Mr. Gores does an superb job plotting the book, creating a much tighter story that spans several years than Hammett did in the days that the Maltese Falcon took place. I especially liked the homage to Hammett's other famous detective, the Continental Op, by throwing in a cameo of Mickey Linehan, another detective that worked with the nameless shamus.Overall, Joe Gores did a great job tackling a difficult task. Most readers are wary of stories that are continued by a different author, and I am usually in that group as well, but I think Spade and Archer nailed it. It's hard to match a classic book like the Maltese Falcon, but Joe Gores did just that, and in some respects, surpassed it.