Magritte's La clef de verre and Hammett's The Glass Key: An Interarts Dialogue

Magritte's painting, La clef de verre, borrows its title from Hammett's novel The Glass Key. The rock in the picture, the key in the title, and the plot of the whodunit generate an interarts dialogue, an ekphrasis, from which Magritte paints thought—a visible poetry that mediates between the stasis of the image and the dynamism of words.