First, let me say that the writing is very good. I did not enjoy it as much as I hoped because it's not a true detective / murder mystery type. Spade hardly did investigating and instead seemed to stumble into clue after clue and run into a key character here and there. The writing style emphasized the characters and their expressions more than the plot. It was not quite what I expected. The writing was so good that it was very easy to imagine every scene and every character nuance, but it cannot be classified as a murder mystery.