One would have to mention _The Glass Key_, in
which the gambling establishments, the newspapers, the
politicians, and the courts are all run by two guys. Of
course, by this time the American public was quite used to
seeing this stuff for real in Chicago and Kansas City. In
some ways, I think that you could argue that this is the book
in which Hammett comes closest to enunciating a somewhat
socialist, or at least "class-conscious", point of
view.
James
At 07:47 PM 5/17/00 -0400, Jay Gertzman wrote:
>Could anyone help me in finding noire crime novels
which deal in detail
>with the way the "rackets" or "vice industry" is
structured? A novel
>like _The Big Sleep_ shows that the criminal
organization does not have
>at its head underwrold types, but people with
political and ecomomic
>power in the community--Eddie Mars, but also the DA,
oil and movie
>magnates, real estate owners and others who profit
variously from the
>rackets Eddie Mars runs. It is this truth, the
suppression of which has
>led to the propaganda that organized crime is an
ethnic-inspired cancer
>on the healthy body of America, that I am interested
in seeing fictional
>accounts of. I can think of (maybe) Chandler's
_Farewell My Lovely_,
>Hammett's _Red Harvest_, and Goodis' weird, almost
goofy but also
>somehow incisive treatment of the racketeer and the
forces beyond him in
>respectable society. I am thinking of Sharkey in
_Street of No Return_
>and Grogan in _Night Squad_.
>
>
>
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