Listen to a sample
The Glass Key
- Author
- Dashiell Hammett
- Narrator
- Stephen R. Thorne
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 1 December 2011
- Run Time
- 6 hours 22 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
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.
Critics Review
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“The plot of The Glass Key is one long maneuver—speedballing toward a futile resolution. It’s Hammett’s flat-affect tale of grasping men who want things and don’t know what to do with them when they get them. It’s a short novel with epic sweep.”
Guardian (London)
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“Stephen Thorne underplays his tough-guy voice to great advantage. His female voices are so good that you won’t give them a second thought.”
AudioFile
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“Ned Beaumont is a new kind of hard-boiled hero: morally ambiguous, of limited effectiveness, neither crack-shot nor pugilist nor deductive whiz.”
DetNovel.com
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Dashiell Hammett
- Narrator
- Stephen R. Thorne
- Duration
- 6 hours 22 minutes
- Release Date
- 1 December 2011
- ISBN
- 9781609983956
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction, Crime and mystery fiction, Crime and mystery fiction
Synopsis
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.
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