The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

After three rather arduous non-fiction reads, I was more than eager for a quick injection of crime mystery, one of my favorite fictional genres. Hammett, most famous for The Maltese Falcon, is certainly one of the most well-regarded American mystery writers. And it was a late night viewing of The Maltese Falcon with its solid performance from Bogart and a quirky and devilish Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo that prompted me to dive further into the works of Hammett.

It is clear that Hammett knows what he is writing about after having been a private investigator for many years. His writing style is tight, direct with no superfluous words. In both The Maltese Falcon and The Dain Curse the stories move at a breakneck speed. To be honest, some time the speed and number of characters in the latter was too much for me. I often had to flip back a few chapters to remind myself who was who and what had they done. The book does not disappointment but it did not leave me floored either.

What crime/mystery writers do you like?

2 comments:

Curly January 7, 2010 at 9:39 AM  

I don't read much crime books but I read some good ones by Ken Follet and Dan Brown... I guess those are the "best sellers" among crime books. I will read "Crissement sur le tableau noir" next and I think its a crime book too... I'll let you know! :-D Oh Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown! I enjoyed that too!

Nels Abrams January 17, 2010 at 4:56 PM  

Sherlock Holmes is still the king.

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