Arrived today from a paperbackswap member.

Sam Spade is not, in this novel, what I had imagined from the movies and radio programs based on the books. Oh yes, he's tough and he has a sense of humor but there is more there.

In this tale Spade helps Brigid O"Shaughnessy acquire a rare bird - a sculpture of a falcon. The bird goes back many hundreds of years and is worth millions. But the story doesn't start out that way. It twists and turns and involves a number of shady and unusual characters, none of whom is easy to like.

A couple of things struck me. The story was written in the early 1900s and reflects a lot of the culture at that time. Women tended to be whores or saints. People from different regions of the world were lumped together. Homosexuals were ridiculed. We get a taste of that in how the women are represented here and how one character is referred to as "the Levantine", and more. I found these aspects a little disturbing but understandable.

What stood out for me in a strange way was the way Spade was described, right from the beginning. His V-shaped chin, eyebrows, nose, all the Vs adding up to his looking "pleasantly like a blond satan", according to Hammett. Through the book I kept trying to imagine this appearance and put the words and actions together with it.

There is more, and I hope the next reader stretches to find it.

Reserved for bookstogive's general lit VBB.

Inside the box.