Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This stylish sequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon from MWA Grandmaster Collins (To Live and Spy in Berlin) picks up in December 1928, just days after the events of the previous novel. Rhea Gutman, daughter of late gangster Casper Gutman, asks PI Sam Spade to recover the eponymous, jewel-encrusted artifact. During the course of the investigation, Spade's former lover, Iva Archer--who's also the widow of his late investigative partner, Miles--demands a share of any profits from finding the falcon that might have gone to her husband, and drags Miles's mob-connected brother into the picture to make sure she gets what she wants. When Wilmer Cook, Gutman's vengeful former gunman, ambushes Spade, it's clear he isn't the only one hunting the falcon; Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan is after it, too. Then there's British Museum curator Stewart Blackwood, who claims the museum legally owns the falcon after purchasing it from the original owner, General Kemidov. Navigating shifting allegiances and playing multiple sides, Spade races rival interests to claim the falcon for himself. Collins keeps the prose lean and sharp, true to Hammett's style, and ushers the proceedings to a tidy conclusion. It's a clever, well-executed tribute the hardboiled tradition. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Did you ever imagine thatThe Maltese Falcon could spawn a sequel? Well, Collins has, and although it's no match for Dashiell Hammett, it's surprisingly successful on its own terms. After all, Hammett's novel ends a bit up in the air, with (spoiler alert) Brigid O'Shaughnessy on her way to jail for killing Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, but scheming, bloated Casper Gutman's gunsel Wilmer Cook escaping after the precious falcon behind all the novel's intrigue is revealed to be a phony. So why shouldn't Gutman's daughter, Rhea, call on Spade just a week later, as Christmas 1928 approaches, to hire him to track down the bird that the untrustworthy supplier, Russian general Kemidov, replaced with a fake? Spade agrees, and soon he has a stable of four clients--Rhea, Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan, British Museum curator Steward Blackwood, and Corrine Wonderly, Brigid's kid sister--each of whom, unknown to the others, has paid him a retainer to locate a treasure none of them intends to share with anyone else. There'll be more fatalities, of course, including two members of the original cast, before Spade gathers his clients together for a Christmas party at which he stages exactly the sort of denouement Hammett consistently took pains to avoid in all his fiction. Collins' dialogue sounds pleasingly like Hammett's; his plotting is even twistier; and if his descriptions mix Hammett's terse, affectless minimalism with Raymond Chandler's fondness for florid similes, that's clearly, as he notes in an engaging coda, his intention. Fans convinced that nobody could possibly continue a tale that ends so definitely owe it to themselves to give Collins a try. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
