Hard-boiled isn't necessarily my thing, but this really was very good. Why write a review when Dorothy Parker, who had such a way with words, said it so well, "He is so hard-boiled you could roll him on the White House lawn." ( )

I had read The Maltese Falcon and didn't like it, and had read The Thin Man, and thought it was terrific. So I figured this book would be the tie breaker on if I liked Hammett's work.

Turns out I don't much like his work. Our main guy, Ned, makes all these moves and all these statements and gives no explanations or context for any of them. He doesn't even explain himself when the other characters in the book ask him questions, he only ever looks at them "obliquely" (Hammett is in love with this word). The story doesn't flow, it's a jumble of moments that have to all be explained at the end.

So it seems I am not a fan of Hammett's, I am only a fan of The Thin Man. Pass, and wish I had my €3 back. ( )

this was recommended quite highly for noir fiction and it's alright ... there's gotta be better though

Dashiell Hammett's fourth novel is many things. Apart from the two Continental Op adventures (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse), it's his most hard-boiled book. And it happened to be the author's favorite among his own works: with characteristic understatement, he deemed it "not so bad". But it's also the least formulaic of Hammett's novels, lacking a detective or even a readily identifiable hero. For that reason, perhaps, fans are not vocally enthusiastic about it...and critics, while generally agreeing that it's superior to Hammett's final novel The Thin Man (which they dismiss as fluff), also seem to be baffled by The Glass Key.

Personally I don't think it's a difficult book to understand, and neither did Raymond Chandler, who called it "the record of a man's devotion to a friend". There you have it. Specifically, a murder which could adversely affect the career and personal life of political boss Paul Madvig is investigated by Madvig's friend, mustachioed racketeer Ned Beaumont. Though his nerves are sensitive and he seems unable to consume much liquor without vomiting, Beaumont has to be outwardly tough to overcome the obstacles he meets everywhere. It's a realistic novel, often jarringly so, and I enjoyed it very much. Read it and see what you think. (The 1942 film version, directed by Stuart Heisler and starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, is good and almost entirely faithful to Hammett's novel.) ( )

Love Triangle

As a caution, if you have not yet read The Glass Key (and really, why haven’t you?), you may wish to wait on this as it does contain spoilers.

Once upon a time, in a small city somewhere in America, a boss ran a city with liberal doses of money and violence. His loyal henchman watched the boss’s back for him, and the boss treated the henchman as a member of his family. The henchman called the boss’s mother, who lived with the boss, “Mom,” and the boss’s daughter “Snip.” When the boss decided to upgrade his standing by courting and eventually marrying a senator’s daughter, the henchman stood by the boss, even though he himself seemed to have feelings for the young woman. When the daughter’s brother, who was courting the boss’s daughter to the displeasure of the boss, turned up dead and everybody turned on the boss, believing he had murdered the brother, the henchman stood by the boss. His loyalty to the boss and his family was so fierce nothing could dissuade him of the boss’s innocence. He set about to prove it to everybody who doubted, sustained some brutal abuse, and dished some out as well. In the end, though, he proved that the boss indeed was an innocent man, at least of this one crime. But in proving it, he severed connections to the boss, maybe severed forever, when in the end he revealed to the boss that he was leaving town and taking the young woman the boss had set his heart on with him. Yet, we were all left to wonder, who, in fact, did the henchman love truly, the boss or the girl, when at that fateful moment with the boss exiting out the door, the girl looked at the henchman and the henchman stared unwaveringly at the vanishing boss.

Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key is at once a superb novel about mob corruption in a small city, the ruthlessness of gangsters, the vacillating loyalty of paid-off pols and cops, and the casual acceptance of murder, unless it involves a member of the elite class, and the disturbing idea that nobody is above, at least for long, their basest emotions and motivations. Underneath all that there simmers another story, a love affair so faint it barely takes shape during the course of the action, and then crystalizes at the very end as the reader is about to close the book in the last two sentences. As a warning, here follows those last two sentences featuring Janet Henry, the girl, Ned Beaumont, the henchman, and just exited Paul Madvig, the boss, that those who have not read the novel might like to avert their eyes from: “Janet Henry looked at Ned Beaumont. He stared fixedly at the door.”

The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon are both achievements and tutorials in the art of hard boiled detective fiction, but The Glass Key may be Dashiell Hammett’s true masterpiece of crime noir. It’s a must-read for anybody interested in the genre, and for everybody interested in fine, restrained, and subtle writing. ( )