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Loading... The Novels of Dashiell Hammettby Dashiell Hammett
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I re-read Hammett's novels after acquiring a battered copy of this omnibus at a library sale. These novels show one of the fathers of "hard boiled" detective novels at work, and while they are entertaining and important to any understanding of the genre, they should not be taken too seriously. "The Maltese Falcon" features several passages of turgid prose that detract from Hammett's objective style; "Red Harvest" is almost cartoonish in it's violence, "The Dain Curse" at times seems like a collaboration with Gothic writer Matthew "Monk" Lewis instead of a detective novel. Nevertheless, all of these novels retain interest for the reader and are far above what was being published by inferior writers of the same genres. Of the remaining two novels, "The Glass Key" was considered by Hammett himself as his best work, and the almost impenetrable psychological plotting and well-drawn characters give that claim some weight; while "The Thin Man" is a fine romp with a hint of melancholy as you can see in the heavy drinking of the hero the signs of Hammett's own decline. (  ) billiecat | Aug 21, 2009 |  Each of these stories is engaging and well-written. I wasn't sure if The Thin Man would be as witty as the movie - it was. The Glass Key and Red Harvest are glimpses into towns filled with corruption and vice. No one is innocent and no one is really a "good guy". The Maltese Falcon introduces us to Sam Spade - quite a shady character. The weakest offering is The Dain Curse. It's interesting but a bit too convoluted and challenging to follow. Despite that, I love this compilation and recommend it for all fans of hard boiled detective fiction. (  ) drlake66 | Jan 20, 2009 | At first, I couldn't get into Hammett as I could Raymond Chandler. Chandler writes so beautifully, you just sink into it, even if the plot makes no sense. Hammett, on the other hand, can't be pinned down so easy. He goes from the Maltese Falcon, which is somewhat like a Chandler book, to the Thin Man, which is very different in tone, and in between, you have the Glass Key, which seems to float in some sort of borderland between waking and dreams. When you read these books in order and you come to that one, you expect the story to become more normal at some point, but it never does. Chandler wrote the same novel (to a large extent) each time--Hammett never wrote the same one twice. Strange then that he gave up on writing so early - or maybe that is the reason. He wasn't content to do the same thing over and over. (Please don't think I'm knocking Chandler - I give him five star reviews also. He is a superior stylist to Hammett -- indeed, he is one of the great writers in the English language. But he wasn't as creative when it came to plots and settings. He used the same character in each of his novels, unlike Hammett, whose protagonists may share some traits, but are hardly the same.) ( ) datrappert | Nov 26, 2008 | Spent something like a month reading this. Even though the individual novels are somewhat short, getting through 700+ pages wasn’t easy for me. (Full review at my blog) (  ) KingRat | Jun 16, 2008 | Six novels in six years! Has there ever been their like. True, there are patterns: the mysterious, often unnamed protagonist (Just the :Operative" in the red Harvest; Sam Spade, of course, in The Maltese Falcon) with power and influence whose source is never explained; uneven portraits of the police, but uniformly tough, sometimes cruel, never there first; sexy women, albeit never graphic sexual descriptions, except a minor one in The Thin Man. Occasionally made fusty by age, they nevertheless hold up – for the tight dialogue, for the cynicism about municipal corruption (esp. Red Harvest), and unrelenting noir quality (except for The Thin Man), a comedy of sort albeit bordering on fantasy. (  ) dcnorm1 | Apr 7, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400)
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