Guardian Review
Crime outsells everything else on audio, especially now with summer holidays looming and people looking for something not too taxing to listen to in the car or on the beach. Purists will opt to download Raskolnikov's criminal career unabridged (running time: 24 hours) from Audible.co.uk, but it hardly fits the lightweight requirement. Last month the BBC launched an impressive package of thrillers, old and new, to suit every whodunit taste. You may already have heard some of the Le Carre with Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. I'll be lynched for saying this, but I think he's better than Alec Guinness. What's more - and this really is heresy - in this terrific adaptation of Hammett's gangsters-and-molls classic, Tom Wilkinson as the macho, cynical, ruthless private eye Sam Spade is better than Humphrey Bogart. If you saw the movie and cannot imagine anyone but Bogie playing the part, listen to Wilkinson in this version and think again. His voice is a mixture of cold steel and hot sex, interspersed with throwaway wisecracks - irresistible. It's a complex story set in 1920s San Francisco against a background of honky-tonk pianos, speakeasys, clacking typewriters and echoing footsteps on sidewalks that could only be made by the sort of flamboyant two-tone, stack-heeled, patent leather bowling shoes favoured by Al Capone. Spade is hired by a beautiful, mysterious young woman, with a variety of pseudonyms and a breathless way of speaking, to trail someone called Floyd, so paranoid that he always sleeps with crumpled newspaper round his bed to hear who's sneaking up on him. I won't spoil it by telling you what happens. I'm a sucker for tough-guy dialogue. Here's the siren reminding Spade that he loves her, to which he retorts: "Suppose I do, what then? Maybe next month I won't. If I send you over I'll be sorry as hell. I'll have some rotten nights but that'll pass. If that doesn't mean anything to you, forget it." I certainly will not, and you won't, either. Caption: article-audio11.1 Crime outsells everything else on audio, especially now with summer holidays looming and people looking for something not too taxing to listen to in the car or on the beach. Purists will opt to download Raskolnikov's criminal career unabridged (running time: 24 hours) from Audible.co.uk, but it hardly fits the lightweight requirement. Last month the BBC launched an impressive package of thrillers, old and new, to suit every whodunit taste. You may already have heard some of the Le Carre with Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. I'll be lynched for saying this, but I think he's better than Alec Guinness. - Sue Arnold.
Library Journal Review
Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett; Bogart's Sam Spade personifies the hard- boiled detective. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.