Books

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931. First edition of Hammett's personal favorite novel. Octavo, original cloth. Advance review copy, with the slip pasted to the front free endpaper, in very good condition, corner clipped, name to the front pastedown. Rare as an advance copy. “The Glass Key spins a more ambitious and unusual web whose threads are male friendship, male loyalty and male betrayal, and considers the ultimate treachery — the murder of a son by his father... In Ned Beaumont — principled, forlorn, afflicted with an uneasy worldliness and the ability to understand the meaner motives and ambitions of friends, and tubercular — Hammett produced his nearest self-portrait” (Diane Johnson, Dashiell Hammett: A Life, 1987, pp. 86-7). It was first published as a serial in Black Mask magazine in 1930, then was collected in 1931 (in London; the American edition followed 3 months later) It tells the story of a gambler and racketeer, Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to a crooked…

The Glass Key is a novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally published in 1931. This work is a classic of the hard-boiled detective fiction genre and is noted for its gritty portrayal of corruption and political influence.