Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon - Couverture rigide

Gores, Joe

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0307264645 ISBN 13 : 9780307264640

Editeur : Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2009

Synopsis

Book by Gores Joe

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Spade's Last Case

It was thirteen minutes short of midnight. Drizzle glinted through the wind-danced lights on the edge of the Tacoma Municipal Dock. A man a few years shy of thirty stood in a narrow aisle between two tall stacks of crated cargo, almost invisible in a black hooded rain slicker. He had a long bony jaw, a flexible mouth, a jutting chin. His nose was hooked. He was six feet tall, with broad, steeply sloping shoulders.

He stayed in the shadows while the scant dozen passengers disembarked from the wooden-hulled steam-powered passenger ferry Virginia V, just in from Seattle via the Colvos Passage. His cigarette was cupped in one palm as if to shield it from the rain, or perhaps to conceal its glowing ember from watching eyes.

The watcher stiffened when the last person off the Virginia V was a solid, broad-shouldered man in his late thirties, dressed in a brown woolen suit. His red heavy-jawed face was made for joviality, but his small brown eyes were wary, constantly moving.

The passenger went quickly along the dock toward a narrow passageway that led to the city street beyond. The watcher, well behind, ambled after him. The first man had started through the passageway when he was jumped by two bulky, shadowy figures. There were grunts of effort, curses, the sound of blows, the scrape of leather soles on wet cobbles as the men struggled.

The watcher announced his arrival by jamming his lighted cigarette into the eye of one attacker. The man screamed, stumbled unevenly away holding a hand over his eye. The second attacker broke free and fled.

"'Lo, Miles."

Miles Archer, holding a handkerchief to his bloodied nose, said thickly through the bunched-up cloth, "Uh... thanks, Sam."

"Wobblies?" asked Sam Spade.

"Wobblies. Who else?"

They went down the passageway toward the street. Archer was limping. He had the thick neck and slightly soft middle of an athletic man going to seed.

"They finally made you as undercover for Burns?"

"Took 'em long enough," Archer bragged. He looked over at Spade. "Back with Continental, huh? Uh...?how'd you find me?"

"Wasn't looking. Was staked out for a redheaded paper hanger out of Victoria."

"I saw him miss the ferry in Seattle."

Spade nodded, put a smile on his face that did not touch his eyes. "Belated congratulations on your marriage, Miles."

"Yeah, uh, thanks, Sam." Something sly and delighted seemed suddenly to dance in Archer's heavy, coarse voice. "We're living over in Spokane so's she can keep working at Graham's Bookstore, even though I'm down here most of the time. Tough on the little lady, but what can she do?"
Spade was at a table set for afternoon tea when the fortyish matron entered from Spokane's Sprague Avenue. The Davenport Hotel's vast Spanish-patio-style lobby was elegant, with a mezzanine above and, on the ground floor, an always-burning wood fireplace. When the woman paused in the doorway he stood. His powerful, conical, almost bearlike body kept his gray woolen suit coat from fitting well.

She crossed to him. She had wide-set judging eyes and a small, disapproving mouth.

"I am Mrs. Hazel Cahill. And you are..."

He gave a slight, almost elegant bow. "Samuel Spade."

Mrs. Cahill set her Spanish-leather handbag on one of the chairs, stripped off her kidskin gloves, and slid them through the bag's carrying straps. Her movements were measured. She turned slightly so Spade's thick-fingered hands could remove her coat.

She sat. She did not thank him. She said, "Three o'clock last Monday afternoon he and two other men came from this hotel, laughing about their golf scores. My husband, Theodore, and I just moved here from Tacoma a month ago, and it's been five years, but I know what I saw."

"I didn't say you didn't."

"Theodore does. Constantly." Her head shake danced carefully marcelled curls under her narrow-brimmed hat. "You men always stick together."

Spade nodded with seeming indifference.

"Theodore and he were great cronies-golf and tennis, drinks at the club. When he abandoned poor Eleanor five years ago and didn't turn up dead Theodore called him the one who got away. Eleanor is my best friend. She never remarried."

The skylight in the high vaulted ceiling laid a slanted bar of pale afternoon sunlight across one corner of their table. Spade's raised brows, which peaked slightly above his yellow-gray eyes, encouraged confidences.

"Did Eleanor's husband recognize you?"

"No. And only when they were past did I recognize him, from his voice-a distinctive tenor I'd always found irritating." She pursed thin lips and something like malice gleamed in her eyes. "Of course I immediately called Eleanor in Tacoma to tell her I had seen her missing husband here in Spokane."

"And she believed you. Even if your husband doesn't."

"My husband never believes me."

"If the man's here I'll find him."

After she had gone Spade remained, rolled and smoked three cigarettes in quick succession, muttered aloud, "What the hell?" and left the hotel.
John Graham's Bookstore was on the corner of Sprague Avenue and West First Avenue, hard by the Davenport Hotel. Spade entered with long strides, slowed as if looking for a particular volume on the crowded shelves. There were a half dozen browsers and an almost pleasant smell of old books in the air.

Graham himself, a thin bespectacled man with a trim white mustache and wings of silver hair swept back from either side of his face, was ringing up a sale on the front register. A female clerk was selling a customer a book halfway down the store.

Spade went that way, his eyes hooded. The clerk was a blonde of about his age, pretty verging on beautiful, with an oval face, blue eyes, and a moist red mouth. Her silk-striped woolen rep dress, too fashionable for a shopgirl to wear to work, clung to an exquisite body.

The big round blue eyes lit up when she saw Spade. She hurried her sale to just short of rudeness, came up to Spade, raised her face for his kiss. Instead, he put an arm around her shoulders, turned her slightly, kissed her on the cheek.

"You didn't tell me you were in town!" she exclaimed in a slightly hurt voice.

"Just for the day," he lied easily. "On a case."

"And you came into Graham's for old time's sake," she said. "Because we met here." In that light her eyes looked almost violet. "That first time, you came in to get a book and instead you got..."-she opened her arms wide-"me!"

Spade grunted. "Just as a rental."

"That's a nasty thing to say to a girl, Sam."

"Not a girl anymore. Not Ida Nolan anymore."

"What did you expect? You ran off to be a hero in France."

His eyes hardened between down-drawn brows. He said in a sarcastic voice, "I love you, Sam. I'll wait for you, Sam."

"I got lonely."

"And married Miles Archer three months after I left."

"Miles was here. Miles was eager to marry me. Miles-"

"I saw Miles in Tacoma a couple of nights ago," Spade said. "He thanked me."

She said almost cautiously, "For what?"

"Going into the army. Leaving him an open field."

"He isn't due back from Tacoma until tomorrow..."

"I'm booked on the four oh five stage to Seattle."

"To hell with you, Sam Spade," Iva Archer said viciously.
The engines growled and shook; white water boiled up around the stern of the Eliza Anderson as she backed away from the ramshackle Victoria, British Columbia, slip. Fog, wet as rain, already had swept most of the passengers off the darkening deck into the cabin for their three-hour trip down Puget Sound to Seattle.

A dark-haired man just shy of forty turned from the coffee urn with a steaming mug in one hand. He had a trim mustache over a wide mouth, narrow, amused eyes under level brows, a strong jaw, a small faded scar on his left cheek. Before exiting he set down his coffee and cinched up the belt of his ulster.

Sam Spade, who had been leaning against the bulkhead midcabin, sauntered out after him. Moisture immediately beaded Spade's woolen knit cap, the turned-up collar of his mackinaw.

The man was standing at the rail, mug in hand, staring down at the wind-tossed water. A glow came into Spade's eyes. His upper lip twitched in what could have been a smile. He leaned on the railing beside the other man.

"Mr. Flitcraft, I presume?"

The man dropped his mug overboard.
Charles Pierce slid warily through the doorway like a cat entering a strange room. He relaxed fractionally when he saw a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey and two glasses on a tray on the table. Spade was at the sink running water into a pitcher. The room was simple, comfortable, homey, with a private bath.

"I want to get this over with," said Pierce in a high, clear voice. "Not that I have anything to feel guilty about."

They touched glasses. Spade said, "Success to crime."

"There's no crime involved here. Nothing like that."

Without obvious irony Spade said, "Five years ago, in 1916, a man named Robert Flitcraft did a flit in Tacoma. Before leaving his real estate office to go to luncheon, he made an engagement for a round of golf at four o'clock that afternoon. He didn't keep the engagement. Nobody ever saw him again."

Pierce downed half his drink. Spade's hands had been rolling a cigarette. He lit it, looked through the drifting smoke with candid...

Revue de presse :

Early praise:

“No one understands Dashiell Hammett better than Joe Gores, and no one but Joe Gores could have produced such a masterful and faithful rendering of the prequel to The Maltese Falcon. Spade & Archer stands on its own as a taut, engrossing existential crime saga set in San Francisco’s vibrant 1920’s, and as an evocation of Hammett’s style and plots is a triumph. Gores’s wondrous talent shines and the shadow it casts of Hammett is smiling.”
–James Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor and Mad Dogs

“Seventy-nine years after The Maltese Falcon was first published, the other (gum)shoe drops. It’s called Spade and Archer and it’s fabulous.”
–Michael Harvey

“It took guts for Joe Gores to attempt a prequel to one of the great American novels. Guts or nuts, had to be one or the other. Lesser writers have attempted to ape Hammett’s style and come off like mannered tough guys wearing their big brothers’ double-breasted suits, but Gores manages to be both true to Hammett's vision and true to his own considerable gifts. Spade & Archer is a triumph–intricately plotted, deft and strongly written, and perhaps most exciting, he shows us Sam Spade at the beginning of his career, deepening our appreciation of the character. I loved it.”
–Robert Ferrigno

“I was amazed at Joe Gore’s Spade & Archer. He's got Hammett’s style down, and the story he tells is every bit as engrossing as anything Hammett ever wrote. I adored it.”
–Joe R. Lansdale

“Edgar-winner Gores has not only pulled off the Herculean task of writing a prequel to The Maltese Falcon but also created a rip-roaring yarn of his own that will please even the crustiest of Hammett devotees . . . The author, who does a brilliant job of bringing Prohibition-era San Francisco to life with street-level detail and a native’s perspective, also captures Hammett’s spare style and tone perfectly.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Veteran Gores spins the straw of an origin story for the firm of Spade & Archer, violently dissolved in the opening chapters of The Maltese Falcon, into storytelling gold . . . Along with the obligatory pleasures of watching Spade dealing with familiar supporting characters for the first time, Gores, a far more virtuoso plotter than Hammett, keeps multiple pots boiling furiously while providing a pitch-perfect replica of his master’s voice.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Here’s another chance to walk the streets of San Francisco with the city’s most memorable fictional character . . . Gores not only creates a compelling backstory for Spade but also does it so completely in the Hammett style that we suspend disbelief in an instant. Rather than marveling at how much Gores sounds like Hammett, we forget all about who’s doing what and let the mood take over. From the clipped dialogue to the emphasis on the geography of San Francisco to the carefully detailed recounting of what a PI does, Gores nails it. He’s equally on the mark with Hammett’s characters.”
–Booklist (starred)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0307264645
• ISBN 13: 9780307264640
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 337