Summary
Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon
"Dashiel Hammett was a writer who translated the swindle into literature", is just one of the countless eulogies addressed to this iconic originator of "hard-boiled" crime fiction. To illustrate the opening quote, here is a masterful description of solving a classic problem in the simplest way, typical of Hammett's hero Sam Spade:
"...Then Spade smiled. His smile was sweet, even dreamy. His right shoulder rose a few inches. The shoulder rose with a bent right arm. The hand, wrist, forearm, bent elbow, and upper arm seemed stiff. a whole to which only the moving shoulder gave momentum. The fist hit Cairo's face, momentarily covering one side of his chin, the corner of his lips and the main part of his cheek between the cheekbone and the jawbone. This wittily detailed description of the "ordinary" punch is just a shining indication of the brilliant detective story you are holding, a novel that has delighted every new one for more than 70 years. generation of readers. "The Colorful Shop" happily corrects the huge injustice that Dashiell Hammett, one of the best writers of crime literature in history (if not the best!), has almost never been translated in our country, and his books on the shelves of our bookstores are hardly remembered even by the oldest inhabitants of our homeland.
With additional joy, we also point to the excellent translation by Mate Maras and the excellent afterword by Pavel Pavličić, who has already proven very successful in crime fiction and texts about crime.
And only a little bit about the content of the novel: a rough detective against a scented cheater, a greedy fat man and a beautiful and treacherous woman in search of a historical treasure... You could say a typical plot for crime novels: yes, but that's why, believe me, it's written completely atypically well.
Oh, yes, just fine...brilliant!
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