Lora Hates Spam

by Dashiell Hammett

New York 1932, the last days of prohibition. Nick and Nora are a couple who spend much of their time in hotels and speakeasies drinking copious amounts of alcohol. I found them very shallow characters and the book very dialogue heavy.

After a gruesome news story I'd rather not have read about a grizzly murder, Nick, a former detective, takes an interest and wants to investigate. This leads to encounters with various low life characters.

I had to push myself to read this, but it was blessedly short and one more well known story ticked off my list. I can see how it did better as a movie. It had that 40's film feeling to it, all stiff dialogue and Rita Hayworth flipping her hair (okay so Myrna Loy played the role, it's that era).

I can't say that I actually cared about the characters at any point. I'm not big on murder mysteries so the plot wasn't of great interest for me. The lack of description made it difficult to visualise the surroundings or much of what the characters looked like or wore so any clues had to come from the dialogue.

The thing I've most taken away from this read was the knowledge that this is not a genre for me, though I've committed to reading one more by the same author, just because it's that well known.