The Maltese Falcon (1930)

It was time to read this classic. I wish I could get the 7 hours back it took to listen to this story. I am not a fan of this genre especially the depiction of women, and the detective. I hated this story and the characters. What a stupid plot and it took forever to get to the end. ( )

It reads just like a film script - at first it was fun envisioning Humphrey Bogart or Peter Lorre speaking the lines but after a while it got quite boring. There's no description or characterisation, just flat, colourless prose. Give me Raymond Chandler any day! ( )

I don't know why I avoided reading Dashiell Hammett. I knew he was an influence on Raymond Chandler, whose work I love, but I only had the vaguest idea about what The Maltese Falcon was about. Turns out, it's not that different to Raymond Chandler's work, and Sam Spade is in the same mould as Philip Marlowe (well, the other way round, technically). It's the same sort of world, the same sort of morals, and though I think Raymond Chandler's writing was a lot more sharp and clear, a lot more new, Dashiell Hammett is nothing to sniff at. And, actually, I think his plots are that mite easier to follow.

Sam Spade's a good character -- it's hard to follow his motivations at times, hard to figure out what he'll do, but he also makes his own kind of sense. And he has some excellent lines. ( )

About halfway through this classic, I realized I had never read the book, only seen the movie. John Huston is credited with the script but key dialogue seems to me to have been lifted from the book verbatim. And why not? Even knowing how it ends from the film, I enjoyed the puzzle and the intricate-seeming but straightforward plot. ( )

Winner of the 2010 Audie Award for Best Audiobook Adaptation,
Finalist for the 2010 Audie Award for Best Audio Drama,
Finalist for the 2010 Audie Award for Distinguished Achievement in Production,
An Audible Winner: Best All-Star Cast
A 2009 Grammy Nominee for Best Spoken Word Album for Adults
One of Booklist’s Top 10 Crime Fiction Audiobooks
A Booklist Editor’s Pick for 2009 in Adult Audio
One of AudioFile's Best Mystery Audiobooks of 2009
Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award

I listened to THE MALTESE FALCON (by Dashiell Hammett; and audio dramatization performed by Michael Madsen, Sandra Oh and Edward Herrmann.) For the record, I have not seen the movie or read the story, so it was all new to me; nonetheless, it was hard to disassociate the idea of Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Lauren Bacall from the production (and yes, I KNOW it was Mary Astor in the film, but still, the idea of Lauren Bacall is so firmly entrenched in my mind because of her relationship with Humphrey Bogart that it is *her* that I'm listening for!) That said, Michael Madsen, in the role of Sam Spade, wasn't half bad! It's an interesting story about the pursuit of a statuette, involving rough hard men, "bad"" women and, the machinations all will employ to get what they want. The noir characters have become so established in our cultural memory, and so stereotypical in nature by now, that a certain campiness has pervaded their image and interpretation. This production was no exception and was underscored by rather heavy-handed sound effects. I get that this is supposed to sound like an old radio show, but really, do I need to listen to three drinks being made with seltzer being siphoned into glasses? There were places were editing seemed a bit awkward, making it clear that the individual actors were called in for their roles and then the whole of it edited together later (no one talks over anyone else, even in an argument and; sometimes the reactions didn't match their counterparts in a conversation.) And there was one other "odd" thing about the production: Instead of having an omniscient voice for the neutral narrative, actors, in their roles, read those passages which often described themselves (i.e., the woman playing Effie (Sam Spade's secretary,) would narrated a lead in paragraph that was about her, so she was talking about herself in the third person!) It was all fun, but I think I would prefer a straight read, the novel or, even the movie! Ack, but what do I know! This recording has won a number of accolades despite what I think!

UPDATE: I was speaking to the studio engineer of this project and he said that the actors were actually all in the studio at the same time. The reason for the disjointed effect may have come from the decision to take the cleanest take of any given line; not necessarily the one that flowed best from the previous line.


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