Spade & Archer - Softcover

A gritty, pitch-perfect noir novel. Spade & Archer is the authorized prequel to Dashiell Hammett's classic, The Maltese Falcon (DEADLY PLEASURES)

Diverting, enjoyable and highly readable piece of entertainment. And, damned if I didn't, after finishing it, idly wonder what Gores might and could do with a sequel (DEADLY PLEASURES)

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 (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (US))

[A] prequel that honors and enhances the legendary volume it enshrines...Gores has superbly recreated Hammett, straddlng the romantic and the urban novel in extremis...This is a very fine novel (James Ellroy AMAZON.COM)

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 ... Gores nails it (BOOKLIST (US))

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 (US))

As with Hammett's cries, this one points to corruption all over the city, enjoyably navigated by Gores, a master flatterer, if not imitator (Natalie Whittle FINANCIAL TIMES)

This prequel to The Maltese Falcon gives Sam Spade's back story and evokes Prohibition-era San Francisco. While it does come close to pastiche at times, Gores has the hard-boiled detective off-pat and is arguably better at plot lines than Hammett himself (GQ)

For lovers of hard-boiled detective fiction, here's the rumbustious back story, seven years before Dashiel Hammett created them in The Maltese Falcon, of Sam Spade, who is sleeping with the wife of his partner, sonofabitch Miles Archer, and how they met in San Francisco as private investigators in 1921. Pitch-perfect pastiche (SAGA)

Gores manages to channel Hammett without leaving us constantly aware that we're reading a pastiche - a trick Sebastian Faulks was unable to pull off in his Bond novel. A sequel would be most welcome (John O' Connell THE GUARDIAN)