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“[Gores] is a master storyteller and fun to follow down the
fog-bound streets of San Francisco…[Spade
& Archer] engages and flows with creepy atmosphere, crisp dialogue, and
multiple plots, one drawn from Hammett’s Pinkerton days, spinning like plates
on poles.”
— Dallas Morning News
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“Absorbing…Readers with an appetite for Hammett can feed it
with this new novel…A fine re-imagining.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
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“Gores’s voice is a pleasure. If it isn’t
seamless ventriloquism, it’s the sound of a writer professing his love for the
master who came before.”
— Newsday
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“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 review)
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“A respectable piece of work…[Gores] captures Hammett’s
razor-sharp dialogue and his lovingly detailed portraits of the streets of San
Francisco.”
— Washington Post Book World
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“Gores is far and away the best candidate to
pull off such a risky endeavor…[He] knows Falcon
forward and backward…Spade & Archer
[is] never less than entertaining.”
— Los Angeles Times
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“Gores delivers the streets gritty, the action
hard-boiled, and the feel of late-night mist seeping into your bones…Hammett
would have approved.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
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Gores delivers the streets gritty, the action hard-boiled and the feel of late-night mist seeping into your bones. . . . Hammett would have approved.
— San Francisco Chronicle
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A welcome addition to the Sam Spade legend.
— Free Lance-Star
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Gores is far and away the best candidate to pull off such a risky endeavor . . . [He] knows Falcon forward and backward . . . Spade & Archer [is] never less than entertaining.
— Los Angeles Times
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A prequel that honors and enhances the legendary volume it enshrines. . . . This novel feels pre-aged more than dated—as vintage Hammett often does to today’s readers. . . . This is a very fine novel. Respectful, but too mindful of the source to be reverent—Spade & Archer exalts Dashiell Hammett, codifies his life’s work and decorously affirms the master’s serious intent.
— James Ellroy
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A respectable piece of work. . . . [Gores] captures Hammett’s razor-sharp dialogue and his lovingly detailed portraits of the streets of San Francisco.
— Washington Post Book World
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Gores’s voice is a pleasure. If it isn’t seamless ventriloquism, it’s the sound of a writer professing his love for the master who came before.
— Newsday
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Absorbing. . . . Readers with an appetite for Hammett can feed it with this new novel . . . A fine re-imagining.
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
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Gores does a bang-up job . . . [He] knits together a clever and appropriate back story for the iconic detective that makes for a nifty period potboiler all on its own.
— Rocky Mountain News
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[Gores] is a master storyteller and fun to follow down the fog-bound streets of San Francisco. . . . [Spade & Archer] engages and flows with creepy atmosphere, crisp dialogue and multiple plots, one drawn from Hammett’s Pinkerton days, spinning like plates on poles.
— Dallas Morning News
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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
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Seventy-nine years after The Maltese Falcon was first published, the other (gum)shoe drops. It’s called Spade & Archer and it’s fabulous.
— Michael Harvey
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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