I’ve read the first few pages of The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler, and The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.  I’ve never read either author, that I can recall. They are both celebrated. They both write cinematically, visually, but in very different styles. Chandler’s is more what I expected out of Hammett:  hard-boiled, full of seedy attitude. An iconic milieu, LA in the forties, is sketched in very economically and very quickly. Hit the ground running is the phrase that comes to mind.

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Hammett walks the same beat, California, the thirties/forties. The Maltese Falcon starts with leisurely - a bit schlocky, also mesmerizing – descriptive characterization. I remarked to my husband, if this were pushed a tad farther, I would think I'm reading a parody of a detective novel. The first few pages are like a deep-pile carpet out of the eighties. A bit tacky, a bit of a goof, a bit much, but so cozy on the toes that the reader is not in a rush to move forward. A whole book of this might start to wear. I’m going to learn something from these reads, which I should have done years ago. I meant to, just never got to them.