The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett

This is the story of Ned Beaumont, a gambler and mob fixer in an unnamed small American city around 1930. Ned Beaumont is always called Ned Beaumont, except in dialogue, even in places where the reader knows it's Ned Beaumont and does not need to be reminded that he is Ned Beaumont, to the point where the reader may get tired of just hearing the name Ned Beaumont.

The fact that Ned Beaumont has no interiority at all - we never learn anything about his motivations or goals, other than some facile dialogue Ned Beaumont gives early in the novel about being a gambler and so Ned Beaumont must always push his luck at all times, to prove that Ned Beaumont still has it - makes Ned Beaumont even more of a cypher and less interesting than Ned Beaumont could have been, in this probably least of Dashiell Hammett's five novels.

Even the title is a letdown. It's explained at the very end: it's from a dream by what I think of as a minor character, though - since she's the prize Ned Beaumont gets to ride away with in the end - perhaps Hammett would disagree. But The Glass Key as a title has very little to do, even metaphorically, with Ned Beaumont and his struggles in wherever this is.

Ned - I'm going to stop the Hammett-parodying full-name thing now - is some kind of vague lieutenant or fixer of Paul Madvig, the boss of this unnamed town. For a long time, I thought Paul was the mayor - no mayor is ever named, and Paul is clearly in charge of the city and is working on an upcoming re-election for his slate, which seems like it would include him - but the end of the book seems to put the kibosh on that. So I suppose there is a mayor, but, like the name of the city, he's not important enough to be mentioned.

Paul is firming up plans for that upcoming election by aligning with one of this state's Senators, Ralph Bancroft Henry. Paul intends to marry the Senator's gorgeous daughter, Janet, but has been quarreling with the Senator's son, Taylor, who has in turn been carrying on an affair (rented apartment and everything - Hammett makes it clear as 1930 allowed that they were definitely fucking) with Paul's daughter Opal.

Now, Paul clearly was married before, and is clearly a generation older than his would-be wife (though not quite as old as the Senator), but his previous wife is one of the many, many things Hammett doesn't bother to mention or explain in The Glass Key, because he spent too many of his words typing Ned Beaumont one more time.

Also, Janet doesn't seem to like Paul in the slightest even before the events of the novel. She seems to be being given, almost as a bribe, to Paul for his support in the election, which is odd - when Paul and Ned talk, it sounds like the Senator Henry-Paul connection will help them both and be roughly a partnership of equals. So I had big questions about why any of this was happening in the first place, other than Janet is a hot patootie and Paul wants to jump her bones and her father's willing to let him as long as he marries her first. (Or maybe it's revenge for Taylor screwing his daughter? There's no hint of that in the book at all, but it's vaguely plausible. Paul does seem to be actually "in love" - in the hardboiled-novel way, which may just mean lust - with Janet.)

Anyway, Paul's re-election campaign is already having some hiccups because one of their gangsters is currently in jail for what sounds like vehicular homicide. Since Paul's voters are mostly respectable and honest, he can't just release the guy before the election, which is making the mugs think he's gone soft. This is a bit of a tricky thing, but it can be handled, and Ned is handling it.

But then Taylor Henry, the Senator's son, turns up dead just a couple of blocks from Paul's club. Ned chases after a bookie who fled the same night - who also, coincidentally, owed Ned a big payout from a horse-race that day - but the bookie is definitely not the murderer, and, even worse, it doesn't look like he would fit into a frame, either.

The rest of the novel wanders around that murder, as a mysterious person sends "questioning" letters - mostly implying Paul killed Taylor and that Ned is covering it up - to various people in this city, and the rival gang boss, Shad O'Rory, puts up a rival slate in the election and seems to be connected to the anti-Paul whisper campaign.

Ned gets captured and tortured by Shad's men, but it doesn't take. He runs around town, and back and forth to New York, doing various things that Hammett will show but never step back and let a narrative voice explain. He eventually finds out the truth of Taylor's death - it's not exactly a murder, and it's all a bit disappointing, but Ned Beaumont does get to leave town in the end with a hot dame on his arm, which has to count as a happy ending for him.

I was not terribly impressed with The Glass Key. I remember liking Hammett's books better the last time I read them, thirty or so years ago - this time around, I seem to like them each less and less. Only one to go, though - and The Thin Man, as I recall, is very different in tone and style.

(Note: I read this in the Library of America Complete Novels. I don't know if I actually recommend reading all of Hammett's novels - see immediately above - but, if you do, this is the best package for it.)