Audiobook Reviews: The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett, otherwise known as the most famous writer of the noir genre, I salute you. I admire your ability to create thoroughly believable, though utterly unlikeable characters, and make me care to my very core about their motives. I respect your convoluted storylines, the ones with plot twists that seem obvious to a modern reader (but of course there is a secret ancient statue worth thousands of dollars), but are actually quite groundbreaking when one considers that they were written before the scripts of all of the Indiana Jones movies. I even enjoy your twisted male characters and their completely period-appropriate, yet socially inappropriate, chauvinistic attitudes towards women of all stripes, whether they be secretaries or clients out to hire a PI or wives or criminals, even though I find them (and your overall depictions of women) generally offensive.

The Maltese Falcon is full of the kind of twisted, shady characters that I adore in a mystery novel--greedy businessmen Gutman; strange, snivelling gophers like Cairo; and staid, handsome detectives with dark pasts like Sam Spade (who will forever be played by Humphrey Bogart in my mind). This, perhaps the most famous of Hammett's novels, is a mystery packed with several layers, a pretty harsh romance (it's hard when the good guy falls for the bad girl, or vice versa, or both), and lines that read like cliches only because they have been imitated by so many writers in more recent years.

The Thin Man is, at first glance, nothing like The Maltese Falcon. Here, our protagonist is not a retired-cop-cum-PI (complete with shady background), but a pleasant, retired cop on holiday in New York with his snarky, adorably excitable wife. No one has hired either Nick or Nora (the retired cop and his playful wife) to investigate anything, and yet they find themselves investigating a murder, searching for a missing inventor (who may or may not be mad), and generally entangled in the dramatic lives of others.

Where Sam Spade is hard, unreachable, and distant, Nick is open, inviting, and head-over-heels in love with his wife. Where The Maltese Falcon is twisted and somewhat dark, The Thin Man is a jaunt through murder and madness. But the sparse, clippy narrative of both stories gives Hammett away, as does the darkly humorous undertones of the plots--no matter how different the stories may appear, they are clearly products of the same pen. Narrated by William Dufris in the perfect noir-like clip one would imagine for Hammett's writing, the audio versions of both novels (available as a combined set) prove an excellent way to re-experience noir, moving it from the realm of Hollywood adaptations and firmly back into the world of literature.

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Thoughts from other bookworms:
Coffee and a Book Chick
The Novel Word

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This satisfies the Classic Mystery requirement for the 2012 Back to the Classics Challenge.

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The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon | Dashiell Hammett, nar. William Dufris | AudioGO | Oct 2011 (originally published in 1934 and 1941, respectively) | Buy from an independent near you