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Popular Culture Review
witnessed as a Pinkerton guard in Montana during World War I (Johnson 20-21).
His first novel Red Harvest (1929) drew on this sordid experience to show the
lethal social consequences of strike-breaking and union-busting. As Hammett’s
anti-capitalist position hardened, the political themes in his fiction sharpened. To
an increasing degree Hammett was transforming the urban hard-boiled detective
story — which he had done more than anyone during the Twenties to create — into
Prohibition-era social criticism.103 The Glass Key deepens Hammett’s work in the
whodunit form and discloses the “anarchic violence at the center of this recogniz
ably American world” (Shulman 416) of corporate power and money politics. In
particular in The Glass Key Hammett investigates the deepening convergence of
capitalism and state power — a disturbing signature of European fascism — dur
ing the widening social chaos of the Depression in the United States.
In 1930 when Hammett was finishing The Glass Key, Huey Long was in his
third year as governor of Louisiana. He had seized control of Louisiana’s patron
age system to create an unprecedented political juggernaut backed by the state
police, which he employed as a private army. To intimidate political opponents, he
posted National Guard troops around the capitol and governor’s mansion. Hold
overs from previous administrations were forced off state boards and commissions
and replaced with compliant appointees. Long packed the courts with loyalists
who ran on his ticket and owed him allegiance. He mixed political payoffs with
strong-arm tactics to dominate the legislature and ram bills into law. He engaged
in bitter fights over utility rates and refinery taxes, the latter issue leading to a
heated impeachment vote and trial in 1929 . After the state senate narrowly failed
to convict Long of charges of bribery and malfeasance, the Kingfish moved ahead
with a daring power grab. Knowing that state law prohibited him from succeeding
himself as governor, he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1930 with two years left in his
gubernatorial term. The Long senatorial campaign engaged in unprecedented ex
tortion to extract contributions from oil companies, road-construction firms, and
building contractors. All state employees were forced to contribute 5% of their
salaries to the “deduct box” or lose their jobs. Exorbitant royalties, commissions,
and fees were attached to state contracts. Such graft and plunder allowed the Long
machine to build a huge political war chest, to be used to finance campaigns, pay
kickbacks, and buy votes. Long easily won the 1930 senatorial election while con
tinuing to serve as governor until early 1932, when his hand-picked successor took
office in Baton Rouge.114
The Glass Key takes place during an election year in a Prohibition-era East
Coast city. It is not named but resembles Baltimore, Hammett’s hometown. In the
novel it is a city notable for its thoroughgoing corruption, which expresses itself
most vividly in brutal politics and a well-oiled spoils system. The mainspring of
the plot is the beating-death of a state senator’s son, which occurs in the opening