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Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, are considered the three pillars of classic American hard-boiled writing. Hammett came first, however, and pretty well perfected the genre and writing style when it was still in its infancy. As much as the latter two authors leaned on him, to my mind they never surpassed him. He was the best.
I am not
the first to note the curious fact that Hammett published five mysteries in
five years, one of them among the greatest novels ever written, then never
finished another book for the remaining 27 years of his life. No one ever
really figured out why, including Lillian Hellman, his companion during those 27
years, though alcoholism, tuberculosis, and persecution by the US government (Hammett
spent time in jail due to his political beliefs) are among the chief suspects. (A
new collection of his short fiction, The
Hunter and Other Stories, reveals that Hammett may have been hoping to
shake the tough-guy image and write something completely different, but the
stories failed to interest editors, hence their publication now for the first
time.)
His first
novel, Red Harvest (1929) has a standard-issue
feel at the opening, when an unnamed private investigator arrives in
Personville (aka "Poisonville") at the behest of an influential
client whose life has been threatened. The client is killed before they meet,
but his father hires the PI to find his son's killer. The suspects number a
greedy girlfriend, a crooked chief of police, the victim's wife, and several of
the town's gangsters. So far, so ordinary. But that's where things start to
change, and before long you realize you're in the hands of a master of two of America's
favourite themes: violence and vengeance. The PI quickly learns he can't trust
anybody, including his employer, who first asks him to clean up Personville
then orders him to leave town. After one-too-many assassination attempts,
however, the PI is unwilling to vacate: now it's personal. "All in all
it's one swell dish," is how one character sums things. And that's how the
nameless PI deals it, serving up first one gangster after another in his
unbending quest to restore law and order. The protagonist has strong
similarities to Sam Spade, Hammett's most famous creation, but other characters
from his third and best-known volume, The
Maltese Falcon, also find their prototypes here, in this powerful and highly
engaging story.
The Dain Curse followed the same year, in what may have been
an attempt to cash in on the success of its predecessor. For his second book, Hammett
threw everything into the cauldron: family curses, religious cults, drug
addiction, stolen jewels. You name it, it's there. And not to the book's
credit. Perhaps Hammett felt paralyzed by his beginner's luck and tried to
figure out just what makes a book work with this second volume. Another
nameless PI serves as the writer's alter-ego, making him sound at times like an
author in search of a convincing psychology of character and event, voicing the
story's apparent contradictions while testing some possible plot permutations.
All in all, it's one big mess. But, what's more intriguing: that this book is
one of the least enjoyable works of detective fiction of all time or that Hammett's
next would be the greatest?
Of his
third and most successful book, The
Maltese Falcon (1930), I cannot say enough. Its story of greed and
treachery, as characters play one another off in quest of the famed "black
bird" of Malta,
has inspired me and countless others to imitate its perfection and mastery. It
is at times funny, cruel, compassionate, bleak, insightful, and riveting. Many
will know the John Huston-Humphrey Bogart collaboration that also made it one
of the most famous movies of all time. And rightly so. To Hammett's everlasting
credit, much of the filmscript was lifted straight from the book, and it all works
beautifully even now. The combination of oddball characters, wickedly funny
dialogue and immaculate plotting make this the perfect noir masterpiece, as PI Sam
Spade avenges the death of his partner Miles Archer and makes the world seem
right in a cock-eyed, cynical kind of way. It was ranked 56 in Modern Library's
100 Best English-Language Novels of the
20th Century.
Hammett's
fourth book, The Glass Key (1931), is
an oblique tale written in a completely different tone from his earlier work.
It's as though abstract expressionism has infected his style. Tension is
rampant, but with little or no emotional anchoring between reader and characters.
Here, all is ambiguity: Ned Beaumont, a racketeer, is asked to investigate the
death of a respected senator's son by his best friend, a crime boss who wants
to marry the senator's daughter. Politics and crime intersect and bisect repeatedly
as the story grows more and more convoluted, until nearly everyone's motives
are suspect. The purposeful withholding of the characters' rationales contributes
to a sense of overall unease, where the reader never knows whom to trust,
though both the story's end and the murder reveal are neatly fitting. This was
said to be Hammett's favourite of his books.
Three years
passed before the publication of The Thin
Man (1934), Hammett's last novel. His sense of humour is back and smarter
than ever, but there is an additional element in the work: love. The writing of
this book happened to coincide with his relationship with playwright Lillian
Hellmann, Hammett's companion for the last 30 years of his life, and to whom
the book is dedicated. Here, the protagonist is Nick Charles, a former-private
investigator who spends his time partying and drinking with his clever young
wife, Nora. Against his will, Nick is drawn into a murder investigation along
with Nora. The couple are fun and lively and seemingly free of sexual inhibition,
as their frank (for the times) sexual banter--including comments on male genitalia--proclaims. The relationship is also
refreshingly free of traditional sex role stereotyping, another miracle for its
dour era. This is Hammett's happiest book and a fitting epitaph for one whose life would
eventually take a permanent downslide into illness, incarceration and disillusionment.
Readers often ask where I get my characters. The truth is, I don't know. While I may steal a visual from life once in a while--a nice head of a hair, a good jaw line--I don't use real people when it comes to personality. Nor are they all some version of me. If I made a list of what my character Dan Sharp and I have in common, it wouldn't be long. I am not a single dad, a private eye, or a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Nor did I ever sell my body for sex, though I have slept on a park bench.
Growing up in Sudbury, as Dan I and did, there was no small share of potential characters: boys whose fathers were alcoholics; a girl named Shirley who had a boy's haircut and wore dungarees and came to school looking alternately frightened and angry; another girl named Pelka, whose father emigrated from Yugoslavia and who drank battery acid to try to kill himself. I knew that world and mingled with it every day at school. I never thought any of them odd--merely interesting or dull, dangerous or friendly. Nor did I ever look down on any of them.
On the other hand, like Dan, there is a little of the sleuth in me. I recall Miss Kristakos, my grade three teacher, who had polio and limped, and who I secretly followed home one day to find out where she lived so I could surprise her with a drawing of Daisy Duck the next day. Or Rex, my best friend of two months, who had no father and whose mother was so poor all she could afford to serve when I came to lunch was Kraft Dinner, which I refused as politely as I could. Rex vanished as suddenly as he appeared. The adult me still wonders how I could trace him to learn how his life turned out, as would Dan.
While I'm not Dan, I admire him and like to spend time in his company. That's why I write about him. I've had an easier life than he has, and that's one of the reasons I admire him, because he upholds principles despite the difficulties they sometimes cause him. If I knew him, I would be proud to call him my friend. I hope he would say the same of me.
Here's looking forward to another great year!
My 2012 was rounded out by two trips to Havana, the first in January and then again this December. Both trips spawned book ideas, as well as articles on the lamentable state of LGBT rights in Cuba and on the country's outstanding success with its literacy drive. Fans of Bradford Fairfax will be pleased to know there is a series prequel in the works that has the intrepid Brad traveling to Havana. I've also been working on a literary novel that takes place during the Cuban revolution. Last month I visited several historic sites that feature large in both books, including the stunning Hotel Nacional de Cuba, now a World Heritage site, set on Taganana Hill overlooking the Malecon.
In November, I was in Palm Springs following a fun- and adventure-filled drive down the coast from San Francisco (yes, I was there the night the Giants won the World Series, in case you're a fan), where I was a featured writer at the Authors' Village during PS Pride. A great event!
Earlier in the fall, I learned from my new publisher that my first Dan Sharp mystery, Lake On The Mountain, was consistently one of Dundurn's top-selling ebooks. Thanks to those of you who made that happen! And just a reminder that Dan Sharp will return in Pumpkin Eater in spring 2014.
Last year I also had the pleasure of being a featured blogger on Unvailed.com, a site dedicated to the pursuit of ideas and the unfettered imagination. I hope to continue contributing to the site in future.
And finally, I just heard that a poem I wrote about the James Dean film Rebel Without A Cause has been selected for an upcoming collection entitled I Found It At The Movies, to be edited by Ruth Roach Pierson and published by Guernica Editions.
What frills, what frocks!
What furs, what rocks!
That French champagne!
So good for the brain!
(Cole Porter)
Thanks to The International Festival of Authors and the fine folks at Dundurn Books for a very swell party at the Harbour Castle Hilton tonight.
Recently I got a bit of exciting news. One morning, early, I found a nondescript email sitting in my in-box. It was so nondescript that I almost overlooked it. It turned out to be from a producer's assistant at SONY Pictures. He was inquiring about the film rights to my new novel, Lake On The Mountain, published last month by Dundurn Press. My first inclination was to think it a joke. It was too soon after publication for anyone even to have heard of it, I thought, but on re-reading the note it seemed genuine enough. Besides, it's a good book with a solid storyline. Why should it be so hard to believe that someone might want to turn it into a film? At that point, unlike others who might have jumped up and down, then shouted from the rafters and quickly Facebooked all three-thousand of their closest friends, I did what any good WASP would do: I went into Shut Down Mode. First things first, I told myself. I began to fold all the clothes lying scattered around my bedroom. (If you've seen my bedroom -- not that many of you have -- you'll know that entails a lot of work.) Then, once I'd obsessively folded and refolded everything, I went downstairs and washed my dishes till they squeaked. All that in order not to think about what I’d just read.
For me, Shut Down Mode occurs when emotions threaten to overwhelm. It "doesn’t do" to get too happy, too sad, too overjoyed, too…well, too anything. Think of the Queen of England. Have you ever heard her let out a really good belly laugh? Not bloody likely, though I’m sure she's dying to. It's not that I don't feel things. Or that Liz doesn't either, but we both find it necessary not to be seen to be Out of Control. Disaster could strike. And besides, we might look ridiculous. I have a friend who once told me I needed to learn to celebrate my victories, small and large. "Because frankly," said he, with a tone that was all gloom and doom, "as a writer you probably won’t see too many of them." A good pessimist, he knew whereof he spoke.
I just shrugged. I didn't understand this "celebrate" mentality. "You just go right on to the next thing as though nothing happened," he said. "Why not stop and enjoy it?" "But what's the point of celebrating something that's already over?" said I, a good realist. Of course, the truth is that stopping to celebrate would mean admitting I had an emotional attachment to the outcome, something both Sherlock Holmes and I won't easily admit to, if we admit to it at all. "Cry at the birth, Rejoice at the death," A.J.M. Smith advises with poetic whimsy in The Wisdom of Old Jellyroll. When it's over, it's over; let it go. It would also be an admission that maybe nothing will come of this email inquiry from SONY. And I would have no control over that, either. Somewhere in my subconscious, I must have decided it's better not to get excited, lest that excitement later prove to have been misguided, like a beauty queen stripped of her crown for louche behaviour. If you don't care about the potential outcome, you can't be robbed of it when it turns out to be nothing. I admit it's a pretty grim outlook, but it feels safe. And, as a result, my laundry gets done really well, when I bother to do it. Just in case, however, I've made one small concession, one celebratory gesture to acknowledge this episode. I have allowed myself, if only in my mind, to start casting the film. "Build it and they will come," right? Or in this case, the film corollary: "Cast it and they will shoot." In the meantime, now that my clothes are folded into a reasonable semblance of order, I can get back to my writing -- the one place where I really am in control.
Jeffrey Round is a Toronto novelist and filmmaker. His most recent book, Lake On The Mountain, was published by Dundurn Books in January. Visit: www.jeffreyround.com.
Dec 22, 2011 Series are tricky, whether books or movies. Often, writers and directors put everything into a first work without realizing more will be required, whether due to overwhelming success, over-riding ego, or a combination of the two. Sometimes it's better to stop at one, but not always. To my recollection, The Godfather Part II was superior to The Godfather. Peter Jackson's films of The Lord Of The Rings did all three books justice, while The Godfather Part III is best left unmentioned. It's a wise creator who knows to scram when the scrammings good. The temptation to continue is great, however, so it's not surprising when artists do just that. Sometimes, fate has the final say. Stieg Larrson's fiction-writing career may have ended at just the right time. To my mind, the first book in the Millennium series was quite good, and the pacing remarkable. The second book was pretty good, but less consistent. The third was a bit of a snore, more dialectic than thriller, with Lisbeth Salander sidelined for much of it, though it still finished with a rip-roaring conclusion. I've since heard Larrson's writing described as "literary crack." I wouldn't disagree. While much of it reads like reportage disguised as fiction, as writing it's enviously addictive: 27 million copies sold as of March 2010. Apparently, Larrson had a total of ten volumes planned. I suspect any subsequent books may have diminished the estimation of the series overall. Sometimes, an author simply outgrows his work. Ethan Mordden's Buddies Trilogy, the justly famous series on coming out and staying out, is perfection of a kind. For some reason, Mordden saw fit to add two subsequent volumes, where his disillusionment with his prior writing is evident. He seems to be downplaying the series' success, warning that his popular portrayals of gay life were unrealistic. (Some might say the jaded, cynical American version of Queer As Folk was closer to the mark. Despite how it brought gay life even further out of the closet, I disliked the American series, and adored the original British version.) To my mind, what Mordden overlooked was that life looks different as we grow older. What seemed life-affirming in his twenties must have seemed sham in his fifties. And why wouldn't it? You don't want to be doing at fifty what you thought was a scream at twenty. Thankfully, author John Burdett has not outgrown his "Bangkok" series, nor has he shown signs of ending it. Burdett is one of those rare creatures: a writer of literary-thrillers. It may be hard to discern, as his books are so funny. If you put Bangkok 8, his mystery about the wonderfully wonky Thai detective, Sonchai Jitplecheep, up against Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, however, you'd be hard put to say which is funnier, wiser, or more literary. Both books include plenty of death and some breathtaking turns of phrase, but because Burdett's book contains a murder mystery, it's relegated to the genre pile and overlooked as literature. I suspect the British-born Burdett did not set out to write a series when he penned what would become the first of what are now four books and counting. (Apparently a fifth is on the way.) Bangkok 8 is so exquisitely wrought that you don't need more on finishing. It's only after the high of reading it fades that you want to revisit Burdett's brilliant and mesmerizing characters and their corrupt world. Thus Bangkok Tattoo, and so on. What's interesting is that none of these books feels the same as its predecessor. In Burdett's case, however, his style changed rather than his outlook on life. What started off as satirical brilliance got darker with each book, though thankfully not less inventive. For what it's worth, here is my take on the first three books of the Bangkok series: Bangkok 8 (2003) Brilliant and original. I can't recall the last time I've been so jolted by what on the surface looks like an unassuming mystery with an "exotic" locale. In fact, it's far more than a mystery just as Buddhism, one of the book's themes, is far more than just a philosophy. In what has to be the smallest "locked room" mystery ever, an African-American marine dies a gruesome death sitting alone in a locked BMW stuck in a traffic jam. Still, it's a clear case of murder. Enter Sonchai Jitplecheep, the half-caste Thai detective and devout Buddhist, and one of the few Thai policemen not on the take. Burdett is effortlessly amusing as he follows his alter-ego, who solves the mystery all the while taking pains to explain the cultural relevance of his world to the western farang. That's you, dear reader. Burdett takes us deep inside the depths of eastern corruption and menace, while granting a unique insider's look into the notorious Thai sex trade. Bangkok Tattoo (2005) Darker in tone and conceptually even more monstrous than its predecessor, Bangkok 8, this book is nonetheless another work of comic genius. For me, Burdett ranks with the likes of John Lanchester, Junot Diaz and Zadie Smith (if that's not a unique collection, I don't know what is) for his brilliant, tongue-biting humour and genre-busting plots. This is the second book featuring Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the half-caste Thai Buddhist detective, and a cast of zanies who come and go as Sonchai tracks the murderer of a CIA agent. While the prose seldom reaches the inspired lunacy of its predecessor, the story's the thing to concentrate on here more than the comically profound soliloquies on the Buddhist conception of life as an inescapable interplay between being and nothingness. Bangkok Haunts (2007) Third in Burdett's brilliant Bangkok series, this is also the heaviest and least fun of his Thai murder mysteries. That's somewhat to its detriment, because the levity is as much a part of the reading enjoyment as the diabolically clever plotlines. Still, the story keeps you hooked. In this volume, Thai detective and devout Buddhist Sonchai Jitpleecheep exposes corruption and skulduggery when a snuff film of one of his amours sets him on a journey to unmask the killers. If you prefer your mysteries hard-boiled rather than droll, you may like this one best. In any case, if the series intrigues you, don't start here. Go all the way to the beginning with the marvellous Bangkok 8.
Dec 13, 2011 This week my newest book, Lake On The Mountain, is going to press. For a writer, that's the equivalent of being in a plane and taxiing down the runway. You're not quite airborne, but your seatbelt is snug and all the expectation is there. The timing was propitious. Last month LOTM received a positive pre-review in Publisher's Weekly, the bible of the American publishing industry. A single glowing sentence from that review will now end up on the book's cover along with a blurb by Gail Bowen, one of Canada's most delightfully audacious writers and author of the highly successful Joanne Kilbourn mysteries. Both of these are great coups and the sort of thing writers and publishers dream of. As with any journey, there's an anticipated place of arrival down the road. For me, as for most writers, that hoped-for destination is one of undying fame, financial success beyond my wildest dreams, and outrageous adulation from my readers. It's called "Dreamland." Few, if any, writers reach it in their lifetime, however, so in the meantime I've learned to enjoy the journey. Duty Free shopping, here I come. Lake On The Mountain, the tale of a gay missing persons investigator and father of a teenage son, is a bit of a departure for me in one way, yet in another it's precisely where I've been heading for years. I intended it to be that rare, some would even say "apocryphal" animal, the literary-thriller. Like most university-educated Canadians of my generation, I was raised to be a bit precious in my reading. Genre? Not for me. Nicht, nein, never. It was verboten! I sniffed my way through the romance section in bookstores. I didn't deign to crack open a mystery or a sci-fi book, what with all the wonderful CanLit novels to be read. So how ironic to find myself the subject of genre discrimination. My first novel, A Cage of Bones, was refused by just about every publisher in Canada. Not because it wasn't well written or literary, but because it was in a genre barely acknowledged at the time: GayLit. In fact, I had to find a publisher outside the country to take it on. For all our literary affectations, Canadians were decidedly behind the times on that one. Not that I minded having a UK publisher first time out of the gate, however. They turned it into an international bestseller, something many Canadian publishers could not have done for me. Learning I'd inadvertently become a genre writer made me see things differently. One day I picked up a copy of John LeCarre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, wondering if it would be even half as good as the film. In fact, it was terrific. But I was suspicious. Should I admit I'd read it? Should I worry it might influence my writing? Since then I've come across a considerable number of genre books and writers I feel can hold their heads up to anything being written today. Not to mention the success they achieve. In fact, you're far less likely to die the death of a starving artist if you can write outside the literary arena than in. Ironically, the snobbery I've faced over genre writing has been a double-edged sword. Some of the most blatant discrimination has come from genre-philes who refuse to accept that a literary writer could or should make the cross-over. Our territory—keep out, is how they seem to think of it. One of my most telling experiences came when I participated in a mystery writers' seminar in New Orleans, not long after the publication of my satirical thriller, The P-Town Murders. I talked about the difference between writing mysteries and literary fiction. At the time, I was set to publish my literary novel, The Honey Locust. Set in the Bosnian War, THL had taken me more than a decade to finish. I'd struggled with it greatly and certainly didn't want to have to repeat the effort. "The formula for writing mysteries is easier," I confided to my genre-loving audience, who gasped. Apparently the F-word is about the worst thing you can say to a genre writer. "Where is this formula? Can I buy it somewhere?" snarled one curmudgeonly old fellow, who turned out to be a seasoned American mystery author. "Try Walgreen's," I suggested. "Second shelf on the right." In fact, all good writing is based on a formula. Agatha Christie used one and so did Shakespeare. If you want to argue with them, grab a Ouija board and do your best. I can't help you there. In the meantime, here I sit on the runway, waiting for my fifth title to be released. I no longer worry whether my books are considered genre or literary or something as yet uncategorized. It's a book. And I believe it's the best one I've written. Years from now, I may still believe it. I know that because of how proud I am of it and how right it seems when I re-read it. I can feel the plane lifting.
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