It tells the story of a gambler and racketeer, Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to Paul Madvig, a crooked political boss, leads him to investigate the murder of a local senator's son as a potential gang war brews.
Ned goes to New York searching for Bernie, a bookie who owes him a great deal of money from a gambling debt, but ends up getting beaten up.
Hospitalized after his escape, Beaumont tells Madvig and Janet that he was laying a trap for O'Rory; he then struggles out of bed to stop the newspaper from printing its expose.
As noted by the literary critic James F. Maxfield, "Hammett employs an objective approach, merely reporting the conversations and describing the surface actions of his characters, never directly presenting their thoughts and feelings".
[2] Ned Beaumont does not fit the popular, famous archetype of Jung, nor the weaker, less altruistic "hero" type of Hammett's other works, but is altogether different from either.
He does not possess the sort of "immunity" to emotional ties that the author's previous detectives had maintained, such as the Continental Op in Hammett's Red Harvest.
Because of this supposed relationship between Ned and Janet, The Glass Key takes on a more traditional story line, that of the detective "hero" and his beautiful heroine, ending with a ride into the sunset of New York.
Just as he continues to bet while he is on a losing streak, he is willing to make another kind of wager on Janet, despite the great odds of the relationship ending badly.
David T. Bazelon, writing for Commentary, thought that Hammett had attempted a conventional novel, in which characters act for reasons of loyalty, passion or power.
Robert Edenbaum, for basically the same reasons, called The Glass Key Hammett's "least satisfactory novel... [in Hemingway] the mask is lifted every time the character is alone; he admits his misery to himself...exposes his inner life.
Together with Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest, The Glass Key provided inspiration for the Coen brothers' 1990 film Miller's Crossing.
The book is a major reference point in the 2017 film, Mercury in Retrograde, whose characters discuss it at length in a climactic book-club scene.
[9] The novel was adapted for the 1935 film The Glass Key, directed by Frank Tuttle and produced by E. Lloyd Sheldon, with a screenplay by Kathryn Scola and Kubec Glasmon.
The lead characters were portrayed by George Raft as Ed [not Ned] Beaumont, Edward Arnold as Paul Madvig, and Claire Dodd as Janet Henry.
[10][better source needed] Another film, also entitled The Glass Key, was released in 1942, directed by Stuart Heisler and produced by Buddy G. DeSylva, with a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer.
[4] The film starred Alan Ladd as Ed [not Ned] Beaumont, Brian Donlevy as Paul Madvig, and Veronica Lake as Janet Henry.
[12][13] The Glass Key was adapted by Howard E. Koch for the March 10, 1939, episode of Orson Welles's CBS Radio series The Campbell Playhouse.
[17] On July 22, 1946, The Lady Esther Screen Guild Theatre presented yet another adaptation by Harry Cronman starring Alan Ladd, Marjorie Reynolds, Ward Bond.
The Glass Key was adapted as part of the Westinghouse Studio One television series by screenwriter Worthington Miner and director George Zachary.
[18] [better source needed] TV version starred Donald Briggs, Lawrence Fletcher and Jean Carson and was originally broadcast May 11, 1949.