Not a review per se, but on the writing of the book and Gores:
Joe Gores' novel about Sam Spade's early days
Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2009
In the rich pantheon of American crime fiction, no figure is more
definitive than Sam Spade. Rough, unsentimental and shrewd, Spade was a
lone wolf.
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"He is a dream man," wrote Dashiell Hammett, the private
eye-turned-novelist who created Spade in the 1930 classic "The Maltese
Falcon." "He is what most of the private detectives I worked with would
like to have been and what quite a few of them in their cockier moments
thought they approached."
But where did he come from? What did Spade do before the events described
in "The Maltese Falcon"? That's what Marin County mystery writer Joe Gores
wanted to know, and that's why he wrote "Spade & Archer: The Prequel to
Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon' " (Alfred A. Knopf, $24). The book
will be in stores on Tuesday.
"The novel took four years to write," Gores, 77, says over lunch at John's
Grill, the Ellis Street restaurant where Sam Spade eats lamb chops, a
baked potato and sliced tomatoes in "The Maltese Falcon."
rest at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/06/DD2H15NDK6.DTL&hw=gores&sn=001&sc=1000
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