I can hear the dialogue coming out of Bogie's mouth...

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

By Joe Gores


That Joe Gores is a huge fan of Dashiell Hammett is no secret - if your missed his Hammett (Crime Masterworks)- you will want to go back and order it after reading Spade & Archer.

This book gives you everything you expect from a Sam Spade novel - mysteries, keen detective work, shootings, damsels in distress, slimey partners, and the quick hard and fast dialogue that Humphrey Bogart pushed to iconic!

Spade & Archer will draw you in from the beginning with Spade impersonating a Port Authority Officer and accidentally getting involved in the search for stolen British gold while investigating a missing persons case on the docks.

The author does a great job of recreating 1920's San Francisco - from the trolley cars to the seedy underside of the docks and formation of the longshoremen unions.

I picked the book up in the evening and couldn't put it down - yes - I finally got to sleep at 2am!!!

If you like gritty detectives and thrilling, moving story telling this is your book.
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Book Description 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 novel--the work of a master mystery writer--destined to become a classic in its own right.

Flint and Silver : A Prequel to Treasure Island

Flint and Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island


By John Drake


From the Product Description: "John Silver had never killed a man. Until now, his charisma, sheer size and, when all else failed, powerful fists had been enough to dispatch his enemies. But on a smoldering deck off the coast of Madagascar, his shipmates dead or dying all around him, his cutlass has just claimed the lives of six pirates. Finding himself surrounded by their revenge-thirsty crewmates, Silver fears his promising merchant navy career is at an end. But then the pirate captain makes him an offer he can't refuse. On the other side of the world, Joseph Flint, a naval officer wronged by his superiors, plots a bloody mutiny. Strikingly handsome, brilliant but prey to sadistic tendencies, Flint is regarded as the most dangerous bandit on the high seas."
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My hat is off to John Drake and his genius imagination - I can't think of a more genuine or thrilling backstory for some of the more popular characters from Treasure Island. This book gives you a different perspective for Ben Gunn, Black Dog, Billy Bones and, the infamous Long John Silver.

This journey follows Silver from Gentleman to Pirate and takes Flint from Seaman to Madman Captain! The partnership begins its downward spiral with the introduction of Flint's "Nubian Princess" Selena. However, Flint's slide from sanity to sadist happens faster.

Warning: Do not read this book expecting to find the Disney version of pirates...these pirates engage in bloody hand to cutlass battles - the sex and cruelty are explicit and I loved every gripping moment of it. None of it is sensational it all works within the story line.
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Full Product Description:
A swashbuckling triumph of storytelling, Flint and Silver provides a thrilling ride back to the rich and wondrous world of Long John Silver and his fiendish nemesis Joseph Flint in this prequel to the beloved classic Treasure Island.

John Silver had never killed a man. Until now, his charisma, sheer size and, when all else failed, powerful fists had been enough to dispatch his enemies. But on a smoldering deck off the coast of Madagascar, his shipmates dead or dying all around him, his cutlass has just claimed the lives of six pirates. Finding himself surrounded by their revenge-thirsty crewmates, Silver fears his promising merchant navy career is at an end. But then the pirate captain makes him an offer he can't refuse.

On the other side of the world, Joseph Flint, a naval officer wronged by his superiors, plots a bloody mutiny. Strikingly handsome, brilliant but prey to sadistic tendencies, Flint is regarded as the most dangerous bandit on the high seas.

Together these gentlemen of fortune forge a deadly and unstoppable partnership, steering a course through treachery and betrayal while amassing vast treasure. But the arrival of Selena, a beautiful runaway slave with a murderous past, and Flint's schemes to secure the pieces of gold for himself trigger a rivalry that will turn the best of friends into sworn enemies. And so the legend of Treasure Island begins -- an epic battle of wits and blades that unravels the mysteries of Robert Louis Stevenson's greatest work on the sweltering seas of the Caribbean.