The Glass Key Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James F. Maxfield

Critical Essay by James F. Maxfield

SOURCE: Maxfield, James F. “Hard-Boiled Dicks and Dangerous Females: Sex and Love in the Detective Fiction of Dashiell Hammett.” Clues 6, no. 1 (spring 1985): 107-23.

In the following essay, Maxfield focuses on Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key, suggesting that the author's seemingly straightforward, objective style contrasts with the ambiguous, self-contradictory characterizations in the novel.

The Glass Key is perhaps the most controversial and problematic of Dashiell Hammett's five novels. Julian Symons gives the novel his highest praise: “The Glass Key is the peak of Hammett's achievement, which is to say the peak of the crime writer's art in the twentieth century”; in Robert I. Edenbaum's judgment, “The Glass Key is Hammett's least satisfactory novel.”¹ Edenbaum supplies clearer reasons for his negative assessment than does Symons for his laudation. Edenbaum sees the novel's central weakness as Hammett's failure (or perhaps refusal) to clarify the motives of his protagonist: “… it...
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