Sometime back someone was saying nice things here about Hammett's The Glass Key, which got me thinking that I hadn't read it in many years.
So I broke it out and read it.
There is something about the better hard-boiled authors of the 1920's and '30s, and Hammett in particular. Their style is so transparent that I literally forget that I am reading prose. I know the characters, plot, even specific scenes of The Glass Key very well, but the prose is so immersively lucid that I am swallowed by the narrative and it all unfolds for me afresh.
I imagine that much of this is due to my own personal appreciation for (vulnerability to?) that particular style of writing, but it is a fine thing. Nothing much better than sitting down to read a few pages, and then starting up from the text to find that you've read a quarter of the book and didn't even notice it going by.
John
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