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Published: 2006
Category: Mystery
Dashiell Hammett, like Raymond Chandler, is a legend among lovers of hard-boiled crime fiction. But for most Americans who know their names, these writers are famous because Humphrey Bogart starred in movies made from their books. Bogart was Hammett's Sam Spade, just as he was Chandler's Philip Marlowe.
That's not hard to understand --- a great film trumps a good book every time, if only because the movie audience is so much bigger and movie characters are twenty-five feet tall and, in the case of Bogart, drop-dead manly. Seriously, what would you rather do --- read lines like this or have Bogart spit them out: “When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it.”
Me too. I love to watch Bogart light up a smoke. Knock back some bourbon. Tighten the belt of his trench coat. And then go out and find some rough measure of justice.
Bogart didn't star in the film made from “The Glass Key,” which may explain why it is less known than “The Maltese Falcon.” Too bad. Published in 1930, “The Glass Key” was Hammett's favorite book. “The clues were nicely placed there,” he explained, “although nobody seemed to see them."
He's right. “The Glass Key” is a cleverly plotted novel, with more than its share of plot twists and turns. It's got a love triangle of sorts (and even a risqué scene that will fuel a fantasy some cold night). And in its style, it's quite innovative: We're never told what the characters think. Instead, we have to figure out their motivations from their actions --- and in addition to the expected sharp dialogue, there's plenty of rough-and-tumble action in these 214 pages.
But that's not why you'll love this book.
It's the politics.
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.
To buy “The Glass Key” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy all of Hammett's novels --- “Red Harvest,” “The Dain Curse,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Glass Key” and “The Thin Man” --- in one volume from Amazon.com, click here.