Customer Reviews

Glass Key

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Of all five of Hammett's novels, "The Glass Key" most resembles a "traditional" whodunit with its linear plot, subtle hints, red herrings, false leads, and disclosure of the murderer in the final chapter. It's his only novel with enough clues to allow readers to figure out who did it--although the identity of the killer will still surprise most readers (including this one, to be honest). What distinguishes it from a typical murder mystery, however, is Hammett's fastidious prose, scurrilous characters, noir ambience, and borderline misanthropy.

Ned Beaumont, a self-described "amateur detective" with an independent streak and a gambling habit, is the loyal underling to shadowy political boss Paul Madvig, whose major concern is to see his candidate, Taylor Henry, reelected to the Senate. When the Senator's son is murdered alongside a dimly lit street, Madvig is the chief suspect, the papers (controlled by the opposition) go on the attack, and Beaumont intervenes with an attempt to clear his boss's name. While not above resorting to ethically dubious behavior, Beaumont retains a vein of rectitude under his tough-guy exterior, and he's even willing to undergo the most brutal thrashings at the hands of the criminal opposition out of loyalty to his own superiors--as long as they themselves don't cross the line.

His fourth novel in three years (1929-1931), "The Glass Key" is bleaker and more cynical than its predecessors, and the mood spirals further downward as the story unfolds. (One can almost imagine Hammett's brooding temper darkening with each stiff drink.) While most of his fiction deals with the underworld and its corruption and squalidness, this work shows most effectively the seedy alliances among businessmen, political bosses, elected officials, law enforcement, media figures, and organized crime in Prohibition-era America.

Dashiell Hammetts creative light burned bright but for a brief 5-10 year period. In "The Glass Key," his penultimate novel, Hammett melded the world of the "hard-boiled detective"--shady underground figures, powerful men and, of course, a beautiful woman--with a theme that recurs throughout his ouvre--of basic trust between kindred souls.

Often over-shadowed in the eyes of readers by the novels that preceeded and followed, "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man," "The Glass Key" is Hammett at the very top of his form. Writing as no one had before, or has since

When you've finished reading this novel (and if you care anything about the American detective story, you will read this novel), think back. Can you recall even the slightest hint of emotion, or the smallest display of caring by one individual for another? I don't think so, and this is the essence of hard-boiled detective stories. Don't get me wrong. You know Ned Beaumont cares about those he is trying to help, and gets beat up for. He's much too tough to show it, though, and that's the key. That's why they call it tough-guy fiction. This story is straight-on, airtight, wonderfully written. In one eighteen-month period Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key. Amazing. We shall never see his like again. Highly recommended.

"The Glass Key" is probably Dashiell Hammett's best-constructed novel. Our detective this time is not a professional sleuth, but Ned Beaumont, a sharp, tough, unglamorous, right-hand man to Paul Madvig, a powerful corrupt-as-the-next-guy businessman with political ambitions. Paul intends to win an upcoming city election and marry a Senator's daughter. But only a few weeks before the election, Taylor Henry, the Senator's son and brother of Paul's intended, is found murdered in the street. The police are desperate to solve this high-profile case. The city's various political forces are inclined to use Taylor Henry's death to leverage the upcoming election. Information is power, and whoever knows the identity of the murderer may control the election. Paul Madvig's now-precarious influence appoints Ned Beaumont as special investigator for the District Attorney's Office, and the newly-credentialed Ned sets out to sort out the murder before it sorts out the power structure in this unnamed Depression-era city.

"The Glass Key" explores the interdependent cultures of politics, industry, and news media, which combine to thoroughly immerse the city in corruption. As much as I admire Hammett's themes and enjoy his stories, I've never considered the stories, themselves, to be plausible. I wouldn't have much trouble believing that the characters or events described in "The Glass Key" could actually have existed, though. This is the most grounded in realism of any of Hammett's novels, and it's the most tightly written. The novel is evenly paced and, like its protagonist Ned Beaumont, is spare, focused, and direct in its purpose. Despite the story's third-person narration that never reveals anyone's thoughts or emotions, the characters are well-drawn and never flat. Ironically, the narrative's objectivity seems, if anything, to intensify its brutality. By focusing its attention on the personal and professional machinations behind city politics, "The Glass Key" creates an insider's view of power in America, circa 1930. By keeping the identity of the murderer and the outcome of the power plays secret until the very end, Hammett keeps us interested. Although it lacks "The Maltese Falcon"'s exotic characters and more ambitious themes, "The Glass Key" is among Hammett's best works, and I believe it's his second-best novel.

I was bowled over by this one. Oddly laconic with some rather awkward turns of phrase (he did it "difficultly"?!!), the writing, nevertheless, is nearly airtight and so sharply laid down that it carries and sets the mood beautifully in this strange tale of a political boss and his gambler buddy who are bent on winning their particular games of life. Paul Madvig, the boss, wants to win the upcoming elections and ensure continuation of his candidates in office while Ned Beaumont, the lone-wolf gambler, wants to get back on a winning streak, collect on a bad debt and protect his apparently dense friend Madvig who has stumbled into a situation. Madvig is in love with a senator's daughter and keen to win her hand and so has allowed his usual good judgement to become clouded. In shifting his political support to the senator, he has lost touch with his own less-than-respectable base, allowing a local gangster to muscle in on his territory. Intent on pushing the gangster back, he makes a dumb play and is soon sucked into a problem surrounding the unsolved murder of the senator's son. Who did it and why are the questions that lie at the core of Madvig's problems and only Beaumont is clever enough, and cares enough, to get to the bottom of it. Along the way Beaumont takes a bloody beating, participates in a murder and loses what he cares most for in all the world. Although the tale takes a while to get revved up and some of the transitions are so abrupt as to be jarring, this was not only a great "detective" story but one with real resonance that goes well beyond the genre in which it has been cast. I recently read Chandler's The Big Sleep and thought very highly of it, giving it five amazon stars. Well, this one's even better.

SWM

author of The King of Vinland's Saga

This time around, the main character is not a detective, but a gambler with political friends & enemies, one friend in particular. While there is a dead body early in the story, this protagonist doesn't seem all that interested in who the murderer is until the pivotal scene when he gets severely beaten for not turning on his former friend who he's temporarily on the outs with.

I've noticed this plot gimmick more than once in Hammett. The rascally characters bring the protagonist's wrath upon them by needlessly attacking him. That happened in one of the shorter Continental Op stories and then again in Red Harvest and now in this one. One could put The Maltese Falcon in that class also.

Personally, I had trouble liking the characters until that pivotal scene, and then only did I get involved with them. So I do feel that this had the weakest opening of Hammett's major works. However, once one gets through the first part, it becomes as riveting as any of Hammett's.

So I do very much recommend this one along with Hammett's other books.

This book is somewhat amusing, yet not as spectacular as I hoped. Ned Beaumont, the sometimes gambler, sometimes political crony is deputized by the DA and attempts to use his wits and his indestructable body to solve the murder of a senator's son. Several subplots are interweaved, but none appealed much to me. I did appreciate the telegraphic writing style, but I never understood what drove Beaumont to keep going after getting beaten to an inch of his life.

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) essentially created the American P.I. novel, first in a series of short stories and then with five novels, many of them incorporating his earlier short fiction. Critics regard THE GLASS KEY as his weakest work; it was, however, Hammett's own favorite, a very convoluted tale of that mixes organized crime, political corruption, and a traditionally-styled murder mystery.

The central story concerns gambler and tough-guy Ned Beaumont, who has been on a loosing streak until his luck turns with a major racetrack win. When the bookie goes on the lam with the winnings, Beaumont pulls strings to have himself declared a special D.A. investigator and uses a recent unsolved murder of a senator's son as leverage to force the bookie to pay up. But his success in this area entangles him in the murder itself: the senator is backed by crime boss Paul Madvig, who is in love with the senator's daughter, and who may or may not be involved in the murder.

It may have been Hammett's favorite, but I have to agree with those who consider it his weakest. Like most Hammett novels, THE GLASS KEY is very convoluted in terms of plot--but in this novel he simply jumps from point to point and scene to scene without offering the reading much in the way of information. The characters are also weak. Paul Madvig is too stupid to be a successful crime boss; it is hard to understand how he manages to command such loyalty from tough-guy Ned Beaumont, and Beaumont himself is very inconsistently rendered. But the novel does have a saving grace that makes it worth reading: Hammett's prose style.

It was, in a word, unique. Hammett effortlessly mixes terse toughness with unexpected flashes of poetry and insight and the result is indeed breathless and intense. Many writers would tear a page from Hammett's style, and a few--James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler leap to mind--would go on to create their own unique and equally powerful styles from Hammett inspiration, but no one ever did Hammett as well as Hammett himself. THE GLASS KEY may be the weakest of Hammett's novels in terms of plot and character, but Hammett's way with words carries him though. Ignore the book at your own risk.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Dashiell Hammett, the legendary writer who singlehandedly made hardboiled crime respectable subject matter for American novelists, pulled no punches when he authored The Glass Key. The pages of this dark, decidedly non-uplifting book are teeming with violent acts and political corruption while vividly showcasing the basest of human instincts. The characters are largely unlikable. And that includes the novel's protagonist, Ned Beaumont. Perhaps especially Ned Beaumont. Ned is a professional gambler and the righthand man to a powerful political boss in the unnamed city in which most of the narrative of The Glass Key unfolds.

The unsolved murder of a Senator's son provides the backdrop against which the numerous examples of depravity and hard edged action take place. Hammett unflinchingly tells this brutal tale using crisp, uncomplicated language that flows smoothly. The Glass Key is an ugly story, beautifully written. Highly recommended.

We live in a time when campaign financing makes every politician a little bit crooked --- and when some politicians, out of greed or cynicism or outright stupidity, sell their souls for a few bags of gold. This abuse of power is depressing as hell. But it's not new. And in "The Glass Key," we see what political corruption looks like --- from the inside.

Ned Beaumont describes himself as "a gambler and a politician's hanger-on." That's too modest. He does most of the smart thinking for Paul Madvig, a behind-the-scenes power broker who controls large chunks of an unnamed city. Ned is no bruiser --- he's tall, tubercular and a sucker for a stiff drink --- but, on occasion, he's Madvig's enforcer. And there is much to enforce: a creep named Shad O'Rory is hoping his candidates will control the city after the upcoming election. Then there is the small matter of a Senator's son, found dead in street, right in the middle of Chapter One.

Everyone has an angle. The Senator needs Paul Madvig's support. Madvig wants to marry the Senator's daughter. Madvig's daughter was having an affair with the Senator's son. And Madvig looks like the boy's most likely killer. Got all that?

Beaumont persuades the District Attorney to give him limited authority to investigate the case. His aim, of course, is to slow that investigation down. Which he does by planting a key piece of evidence.

And that's not half of it. The newspaper publisher is heavily in debt. The mortgage on his plant is held by a bank that favors a candidate not in Madvig's stable. So what? As Beaumont points out, "He'll do what he's told to do and print what he's told to print."

Dirty stuff, all of it. Which isn't to say there's no hero. There is --- Ned Beaumont. How can that be? Because there's a thin vein of idealism in Ned. Because he has a code. Because, in the end, he is a gentleman. And because he recognizes that Madvig, though corrupt, has the city's interests at heart.

That's what makes "The Glass Key" so fascinating --- the way it presents a raw, ugly reality and then makes a kind of sense of it. Is moral order restored at the end? The title tells us it can't be; the glass key is a phrase from a young woman's dream. Yes, it can open a door. Once. Then it shatters. And the door can never be locked again. You don't need deep Freudian understanding to grasp that she's talking about the price of worldly knowledge --- that is, the end of innocence.

If "The Glass Key" doesn't seem familiar to today's newspaper readers, maybe it's because it's more atmospheric. Ned Beaumont's fingers are always wrapped around a dappled cigar. And some of the men wear both vests and hats. They make corruption almost stylish.