The Maltese Falcon

⚖The case for it

Hammett never once steps inside anybody’s head. You see what Spade sees and no more, so you are lied to at exactly the rate he is, and the whole ensemble has to be built out of talk and gesture. Gutman gets the best of it, all courtesy and appetite, and readers reread his speeches for the pleasure of them. San Francisco is specific rather than atmospheric: fog, cramped offices, late calls at apartment doors. The book is “stuffed so full of breezy, quotable lines” and short enough to finish in a weekend, which is why readers still call it “the gold standard for hardboiled detective stories.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Spade calls every woman precious or darling instead of her name and puts hands on them uninvited, which reads now “like a bad sexual harassment training video.” He is also sleeping with his partner’s wife before page one, which disqualifies him as anyone’s moral centre for a fair number of readers. The gay-coded henchman is one of the “cliche and arguably nowadays harmful caricatures” the book leaves behind it. The opening chapters over-describe, and some readers report “I knew before I was half way through.” A late coincidence then arrives “totally out of the logic of the story,” needing paragraphs of explanation afterwards.

— the honest librarian

5h

honest hours

7

sittings