Glass Key
Regular price
€17.50
Corruption, murder, beauty and innocence . . . 'Great crime fiction started with Hammett' James Ellroy
'Not just the first of the tough school of crime-writing but the best' THE TIMES
Ned Beaumont is a tall, thin, moustache-wearing, TB-ridden, drinking, gambling, hanger-on to the political boss of a corrupt Eastern city.
Nevertheless, like every Hammett hero (and like Hammett himself), he has an unbreakable, if idiosyncratic, moral code. Ned's boss wants to better himself with a thoroughbred senator's daughter; but does he want it badly enough to commit murder? If he's innocent, who wants him in the frame? Beaumont must find out.
Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was born in Maryland, left school at 14 and had several jobs - messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, timekeeper, yardman, machine operator and stevedore - until he became an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His experiences as a private detective laid the foundations for his writing career. His work includes The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest, The Glass Key, The Thin Man and some eighty short stories, mostly published in Black Mask magazine.