The Glass Key
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.91 (936 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B004HFRJPS |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 532 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-10-03 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
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. This classic Hammet work of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.From the Trade Paperback edition.
His gift of invention never tempted him beyond the limits of credibility."-- The New York TimesFrom the Trade Paperback edition.. "Hammett's prose was clean and entirely unique. His characters were as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction
"DO NOT BUY the cheap KINDLE EDITION, PERIOD" according to N. Andreassen. Please note that this review is of an edition of The Thin Man that sold for about a buck. It is not about any edition of The Glass Key, nor is it about the ten-dollar edition of The Thin Man. This review now evidently appears under everything Hammett ever wrote, but I did not post it under everything Hammett ever wrote. Why can't Amazon stop reviews from "bleeding" like this? Again, the following pertains only to an edition of TTM that sold for about one dollar.DO NOT buy the Kindle edition of The Thin Man. Reading this cheap Kindle version is like walking a . "A dark swan song" according to Whistlers Mom. Dashiell Hammett's novels were sensations when they were published and with good reason. He had actually worked for seven years (1915 to 1922) as an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency and this background gave his mysteries a grim realism normally lacking in the genre. To this day, his novels and stories which feature the "Continental Op" are far more believable than most detective stories. The guy knew his stuff and he could write.As did many other greats in that era, he started in the "pulps" and published his first novel in 1929. Three more follow. Good Story, Annoying Recording George H. Good book, bad recording.Ever hear Firesign Theatre's "Nick Danger" episodes, where male actors do the Femme Fatale's voice in falsetto? This recording is exactly the same. Unfortunately, here we are supposed to take the characters seriously. The unintentional humor lasts about five minutes, after which I turned it off and listened to Firesign.The contrast between the realistic male narrator's voice and the absurd falsetto of the females creates a jarring disconnect. Although I did finally listen to all six disks, I never really lost myself in the narrative.N