HAMMETT'S "LAST GREAT NOVEL": VERY SCARCE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF THE GLASS KEY

HAMMETT, Dashiell. The Glass Key. New York, London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931. Octavo, original light green cloth, original dust jacket. $17,500.

First American edition of Hammett's favorite novel, praised for combining “the tradition of Sherlock Holmes with the style of Ernest Hemingway" (New York Times), in rarely found original dust jacket.

The Glass Key, Hammett's "last great novel" (Mellen, 27), skillfully unites "the tradition of Sherlock Holmes with the style of Ernest Hemingway" (New York Times). Hammett once told Blanche Knopf: "I'm one of the few… who take the detective story seriously… Someday somebody's going to make 'literature' of it… and I'm selfish enough to have my own hopes." In a period of only three years, Hammett wrote his most important novels, Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931), the fourth novel by "the most important member of the hard-boiled school of fiction" (Steinbrunner/Penzler, 186). This is Hammett's "last earnest effort to make literature of the detective story. According to his biographer Richard Layman, The Glass Key was Hammett's favorite among his books. That may have been so because, more than any other, The Glass Key integrates the mystery plot into a complex novelistic fabric (it is the only one of Hammett's books in which the protagonist has never been a detective)" (McCann, Gumshoe America, 97, 121). "Told in the crispest and sharpest of prose, The Glass Key is Hammett's darkest vision of crime, corruption and American politics" (Rennison & Wood, 100 Must-Read American Novels). Basis for the 1942 film starring Alan Ladd. First issued in England in 1931 by Knopf, "which closed their London office soon after" (Fine Books & Collections). This first American edition quickly followed three months later. Serialized in the magazine Black Mask in four parts from March through June 1930, Hammett revised The Glass Key extensively for book publication. Layman A4.2.a.

Interior fine, usual mild fading to cloth, spine colors exceptionally vivid; unrestored dust jacket with shallow chipping to spine ends, wear along folds, mild toning to spine. An extremely good copy.