his is a terrible book. Nolan (who wrote a biography of Dashiell Hammett that I reviewed positively last year) has written a noirish mystery featuring Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Earle Stanley Gardner as detectives in 1930s Hollywood.

This is the first of a series and emphasizes Hammett (although Chandler and Gardner do appear). The mystery is a rehash of the Maltese Falcon -- it's a terrible mystery. The prose is a rehash of Hammett's signature style -- it's terrible prose. The character of Hammett is a rehash of the real Hammett -- it's a terrible character. This is just a bad book.

As if that wasn't enough, it's an irritating book. In the course of the story, Hammet runs into famous people and has little conversations with them, Hammett's side of which can be summarized as follows: "Hey, you're famous. I'm famous too. You are famous because of X. We know each other because of Y. Well, see you around." These cameos serve no purpose in the book and are totally unrelated to the plot -- they just showcase Nolan's knowledge of Depression-era Hollywood. The worst of these encounters occurs when Hammett runs into 15-year old Ray Bradbury (who is working in a used car lot) and Bradbury proudly proclaims "... someday people will know who I am. I'm going to be a famous writer like Edgar Rice Burroughs, with my name on lots of books!"

There are two other books in this series. I won't be reading them.