The Adventures of Sam Spade by Hammett, Dashiel
The Adventures of Sam Spade by Hammett, Dashiel
MEET SAM SPADE.
Meet the rough, tough dick of THE MALTESE FALCON.
Meet the man with a V-for-Victory face who looks like a blond satan; the man who hated his partner’s guts but who tracked down his killer; the man who believes it’s bad business to let a killer get away with it, no matter who gets hurt, even if it’s the woman you love.
Meet the private agency detective whom Casper Gut-man (The Fat man) called wild, astonishing, unpredictable, amazing — a most headstrong individual who’s not afraid of a bit of trouble —an uncommonly difficult person to get the best of— a man of many resources and nice judgment; a man who can mix his Bacardi, Manhattans, and knockout-drops, and still land on his feet right side up; who
is a son of a gun when it comes to plain speaking and a clear understanding; whose dialogue can telescope to two words, the first a short guttural verb, and the second “you”; who can play both ends against the middle, have his pie and eat it, outwit, outfight, and outbluff, whichever way the cards fall.
Meet that rough-and-tumble operative who is most dangerous when his smile flickers with a dreamy quality; who hates to be hit without hitting back; who won’t play the sap for anyone, man or woman, dead or alive; who can call a $2,000,000 rara avis a dingus and who, when asked in the latest movie version what the heavy lead falcon was made of, answered: “the stuff of dreams.”
Meet the wild man from Frisco who always calls a spade a spade.
Meet Sam.
There are only four Sam Spade stories —THE MALTESE FALCON and the three short stories now collected in book form for the first time. If there were more, we’d fill the book with Sam Spade. But as a great actress once said: “That’s all there is, there isn’t any more.”
To give you full measure in this first volume of Ham-mett short stories, we’ve added to THE ADVENTURES OF SAM SPADE four assorted tales, all genuine 24-carat Hammett. The first, The Assistant Murderer, is a novelette out of Hammet’s “Black Mask” days, written three years before the fabulous Falcon; it introduces Alec Rush, the ugliest detective in fiction, one of Hammett’s most authentic private ops. The second, Nightshade, is a short-short story penned with bitter-poison ink. The third, The Judge Laughed Last, is Hammett in a wryly humorous and
ironically playful mood. The fourth, His Brother’s Keeper, is a story of murder and the prizefighting racket, one of Hammett’s finest studies of character and background.
Many adjectives have been wrapped around Hammett’s neck. His style has been called hard, hardbitten, and hard-boiled; lean, dynamic, and unsentimental; penetrating, virile, and shocking. But the adjective used most often is probably the word “realistic.” Hammett is the acknowledged founder of the contemporary realistic school. But despite the unanimity of this critical opinion, it is neither fair nor accurate to describe Hammett’s style as simply “realistic.” It’s a bit more complicated than that —and strangely enough, a bit more paradoxical.
In our considered judgment we would not label Hammett a “realist” and merely let it go at that. We would add an adjective of our own, to fill out the picture, to put the finger on the very heart of Hammett. We would call him a “romantic realist.”
Examine the plot of Hammett’s most famous story, THE MALTESE FALCON: the seventeen years’ crusade to win that fabulous, solid-gold, gem-loaded bird; the trail of theft, murder, doublecross, chicanery, blood, sweat, and tears. Can you imagine a more romantic theme?
Every incident in the main line of the plot is 2oth Century fairy tale. Against this background of sheer melodrama and sensational romanticism, how does Hammett achieve the hard lacquer of realism? What makes critics and readers, one and all, think of THE MALTESE FALCON — and RED HARVEST and THE DAIN CURSE before the FALCON—as hardboiled stories?
The secret is in Hammett’s method. Hammett tells his
modern fables in terms of realism. He blends, intermingles, combines extreme romanticism of plot with extreme realism of characterization. His stories are the stuff of dreams; his characters are the flesh-and-blood of reality. The stories are flamboyant extravaganzas, but the characters in those stories are authentic human beings who talk, think, and act like real people. Their speech is tough, earthy, two-syllabled; their desires, their moods, their frustrations, are cut open, laid bare, probed with frank, hard fingers.