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.
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