29 September, 2002
The Glass Key
Dashiell Hammett
1933
192 pp, HC
I read this last week when I was sick, and I didn't get a very strong impression of it. There's a large chance that this is entirely due to the fact that I was poorly-rested and drugged up on cold medicine, although I I suppose it's possible that it may be significantly less interesting than Hammett's other novels. I'll have to reread it some day when I'm in better health.
Unlike in the other Hammett novels I've read, the protagonist of this book is not a private detective. Ned Beaumont is an advisor/crony/enforcer for and friend of Paul Madvig, a political boss in a medium-sized city somewhere in the Eastern United States. The politician is looking to move up in the world, and marry the daughter of a U. S. Senator. Trouble arises when the Senator's son is found murdered in the street near Madvig's office. As time passes and no progress is made in solving the murder, Madvig's political enemies begin to use it to their advantage, spreading rumor and supposition that Madvig himself was the killer. In order to save his friend's career, reputation, and possibly his life, Beaumont must uncover the murderer.
It seemed to me that, in this novel, Hammett was trying to go beyond the standard crime novel, and inject an element of interpersonal relationships into his work. The story isn't just about the murder mystery, but about how the situation affects and permanently alters the relationship between the two men, Beaumont and Madvig. I don't think it's entirely successful in exploiting that angle, mostly because narrative style is very detached, and dampens the emotional impact. However, it does help to make Beaumont a more sympathetic protagonist than either Sam Spade or the main character of Red Harvest. As for the mystery part of the plot, I found it pretty hard to follow, but I think that might just have been 'cause of the drugs.