Although this is simply a print treatment of the original script write up for the Thin Man sequels (After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man), they are presented with fascinating background details, historical information, and inside bits on what was going on behind the scenes.Each of the two stor...
Funny, clever, snarky. And complicated mysteries at the heart of both these screenplays. RETURN OF THE THIN MAN and ANOTHER THIN MAN. I was hoping to count them as two books, but they are not.In RETURN, Nick and Nora return to San Francisco and get embroiled in a family mystery. It's so funny how...
(Since the beginning of 2008 I've been writing an ongoing series of essays here that I call the "CCLaP 100," whereby I read for the first time a hundred books considered by many to be classics, and then write reports here on whether or not I think they deserve this label. For the complete list of...
Book Circle Reads 36Rating: 3.5* of five, because I love the movie more The Publisher Says: Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of H...
I often get asked why, as someone who appears to be politically switched on, I try and avoid the news media as much as possible. Well, the thing is, the truth of the world is too much for me these days. I can’t take it. Call it cowardice if you like, but I hate feeling angry or upset all the time...
The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett, father of the modern crime novel, is not only an action-filled tale of misdeeds and murder, but a study of 1920s American culture and society. Within the novel’s pages, here is a sampling of what a reader will find:First-Person Hardboiled NarratorThe unnamed C...
I read this as a follow-up to reading The Continental Op, which I enjoyed very much. This volume includes eight more stories featuring the Op, as well as an unfinished novel, Tulip. The Op's stories were great, as I expected. I thought that with some of these stories, Hammett seemed to be play...
So, I'm not going to say, "wow, this is the greatest noir novel I've ever read." It is written by the father of Noir - Dashiell Hammett (Mr Maltese Falcon, and Mr. Thin Man). It was a little difficult to get into it seemed to not want to commit to a story line at first and I was somewhat disappoi...
I actually had never heard of this "novel" until I saw it at the library while contemplating whether or not to grab "The Big Knockover". A tiny little book with the words "A Novel" on the cover. I am pretty sure there is no way this qualifies as a novel. It is about 76 pages which makes it someth...
It was a necessary train ride, off the eastcoast grid to the center of the rust belt. It was a necessary six hours, even before whistle-stops and unexplained lulls were counted in. After a high-proof holiday and a few sleepless celebrations, the ride back to college was generally comfortable and...