The Glass Key

Written by:
Dashiell Hammett
Narrated by:
Stephen R. Thorne

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
3
Narrator
1
Release Date
December 2011
Duration
6 hours 24 minutes
Summary
Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett's tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.

A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel.
Reviews
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Nate H.

If you like Hammett's other stories, you'll like this too, but it is different from his Continental Op and Sam Spade stories. Instead of being centered around a private detective, the protagonist is a not quite as clever as he thinks ward heeler for a city political boss. Common Hammett themes of blackmail, vice, power and violence play out, along with lot's of snappy dialog, but the characters are a little more human. This makes the work a little less pulpy but offers satisfying characters in its stead. The Coen Brothers' "Miller's Crossing" draws heavily from this book, but they are two separate stories.

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