Rating: 
Summary: Hammett's First Novel is a Staple of Hard-Boiled Fiction.
Review: "Red Harvest" was author Dashiell Hammett's first novel. The material was not entirely original; it first appeared in serial form in "Black Mask" magazine in 1927-1928 under the title "The Cleansing of Poisonville". Hammett reworked the story into novel form, and "Red Harvest" was published in 1929. This is also the first of Hammett's popular "Continental Op" novels, which feature an unnamed private detective employed by the Continental Detective Agency of San Francisco. "Red Harvest"'s narrator and veteran Continental operative defies any idea of a glamorous or attractive crime fighter. He's short, pot-bellied, alcoholic, and resolutely cynical. He's living in an immoral world, where success comes to those who fight fire with fire. Like all of Hammett's protagonists, he has little use for the law, but lives by a personal code to which he strictly adheres. That doesn't make him especially ethical, only principled. But Hammett's characters, like Hammett himself, are coping in their own way with the widespread corruption that ruled America's cities in the 1920s and 1930s."Red Harvest"'s opening paragraph is one of the best hooks I've ever read in a novel. It's fantastic. We are sucked into the mind of our narrator, the unnamed Continental operative, and we want only to read more about this man of such blunt wit. The Continental Op has been called to a town named Personville by the owner of the town's newspaper, Donald Willsson. He doesn't know what the job is, but before he can find out, the client is murdered. So the first order of business is to solve the murder. In doing so, our detective discovers how Personville got its nickname, Poisonville. Everything and everyone in this town is corrupt. Its citizens are ruled by bootleggers and low-lifes who retain their power through indiscriminate violence. Even the town's former boss, Elihu Willsson, a wealthy industrialist who was not above murder in his own day, is now reluctantly under the thumb of the new crop of thugs. Our detective takes offense at Poisonville's powers trying several times to assassinate him in the course of his murder investigation, so he decides to stay and clean up the place. Little did he expect that Poisonville's rampant bloodshed would poison him, as he is seduced by the town's murderous ways. It's surprising to me that Dashiell Hammett wrote "Red Harvest" years before "The Thin Man". "Red Harvest"'s style seems more developed and its characters better drawn than in the later novel. That's not to say that I don't like "The Thin Man". I actually prefer its more scandalous brand of cynicism. Hammett is always cynical, but sociopathic behavior is to be expected from the characters that inhabit Personville's landscape. They are criminals and police officers (remember, this is the 1920s). The undeniably sociopathic behavior of everyone in "The Thin Man" -from small time con men, to respectable bourgeois, to Park Avenue blue bloods- is like a slap in the face. And so is the book's shameless lack of justice. But perhaps Hammett just chose a different shock tactic in "Red Harvest". The book's greatest cynicism is in the ease with which the Continental Op is seduced into abandoning his own code of conduct when faced with the opportunity to murder without consequences. That's why they call it Poisonville. Fans of noir detective stories wont' want to miss "Red Harvest". There are enough hard-boiled one-liners to inspire glee in those who really enjoy them. Hammett's style is fluid and easy to read. And there is more than one mystery to be solved.
Rating:
Summary: Hammett's First Novel is a Staple of Hard-Boiled Fiction.
Review: "Red Harvest" was author Dashiell Hammett's first novel. The material was not entirely original; it first appeared in serial form in "Black Mask" magazine in 1927-1928 under the title "The Cleansing of Poisonville". Hammett reworked the story into novel form, and "Red Harvest" was published in 1929. This is also the first of Hammett's popular "Continental Op" novels, which feature an unnamed private detective employed by the Continental Detective Agency of San Francisco. "Red Harvest"'s narrator and veteran Continental operative defies any idea of a glamorous or attractive crime fighter. He's short, pot-bellied, alcoholic, and resolutely cynical. He's living in an immoral world, where success comes to those who fight fire with fire. Like all of Hammett's protagonists, he has little use for the law, but lives by a personal code to which he strictly adheres. That doesn't make him especially ethical, only principled. But Hammett's characters, like Hammett himself, are coping in their own way with the widespread corruption that ruled America's cities in the 1920s and 1930s. "Red Harvest"'s opening paragraph is one of the best hooks I've ever read in a novel. It's fantastic. We are sucked into the mind of our narrator, the unnamed Continental operative, and we want only to read more about this man of such blunt wit. The Continental Op has been called to a town named Personville by the owner of the town's newspaper, Donald Willsson. He doesn't know what the job is, but before he can find out, the client is murdered. So the first order of business is to solve the murder. In doing so, our detective discovers how Personville got its nickname, Poisonville. Everything and everyone in this town is corrupt. Its citizens are ruled by bootleggers and low-lifes who retain their power through indiscriminate violence. Even the town's former boss, Elihu Willsson, a wealthy industrialist who was not above murder in his own day, is now reluctantly under the thumb of the new crop of thugs. Our detective takes offense at Poisonville's powers trying several times to assassinate him in the course of his murder investigation, so he decides to stay and clean up the place. Little did he expect that Poisonville's rampant bloodshed would poison him, as he is seduced by the town's murderous ways. It's surprising to me that Dashiell Hammett wrote "Red Harvest" years before "The Thin Man". "Red Harvest"'s style seems more developed and its characters better drawn than in the later novel. That's not to say that I don't like "The Thin Man". I actually prefer its more scandalous brand of cynicism. Hammett is always cynical, but sociopathic behavior is to be expected from the characters that inhabit Personville's landscape. They are criminals and police officers (remember, this is the 1920s). The undeniably sociopathic behavior of everyone in "The Thin Man" -from small time con men, to respectable bourgeois, to Park Avenue blue bloods- is like a slap in the face. And so is the book's shameless lack of justice. But perhaps Hammett just chose a different shock tactic in "Red Harvest". The book's greatest cynicism is in the ease with which the Continental Op is seduced into abandoning his own code of conduct when faced with the opportunity to murder without consequences. That's why they call it Poisonville. Fans of noir detective stories wont' want to miss "Red Harvest". There are enough hard-boiled one-liners to inspire glee in those who really enjoy them. Hammett's style is fluid and easy to read. And there is more than one mystery to be solved.
Rating: 
Summary: ultimately an ordinary gangland crime novel..
Review: 'Red Harvest' starts off so well, much like a Raymond Chandler novel. A man is murdered under strange circumstances, with his intriguingly strange family members being either suspects or wanting revenge. In waltzes a private investigator, ala Philip Marlowe, who seems tough, street-wise, and does well with the ladies. Oh, and the lingo throughout is very 1930s tough guy talk. However 'Red Harvest' ultimately sinks into mediocrity. Why?
Firstly, Dashiell Hammett spins an overly complex story with way too many characters ... into what is a very short book. Too many killings, too much action, very little coherence. While the story sort of pulls itself together in the end I find myself ultimately bored, and disappointed, with the entire effort.
Bottom line: not an enjoyable reading experience.
Rating: 
Summary: A noir masterpiece
Review: All those writers that flood the market these days, who cannot write a book of less than 500 pages and who think a "violent" story means also "gross and gruesome;" all those intellectuals that cannot see pith in dime novels, they should be locked up somewhere with this very slim book and not be released until they have learned some facts of literature.This is a gem of a book, from the unforgettable opening paragraph to the final "he gave me merry hell," there is not one word, one comma or one period too many. Hammett can describe a character or a situation in five lines, the way a good painter may draw a human figure or an object with just five strokes of the pencil. The plot is tight, raw and yet elegant; however not to be recommended for people with short attention spans, because it has so many twists and turns, and more characters than a Russian novel. This only adds to the interest, though. I have read this book over and over and always find new things about it.
Rating:
Summary: Corruption's stench: "I had gone off the edge of the roof"
Review: Between 1915 and 1922, Dashiell Hammett worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, initially from Baltimore's Continental Building office and later in Washington State and California. His experiences for the firm provided the background and the name for the Continental Detective Agency that features in most of his stories and in two of his novels (including "Red Harvest"), and Pinkerton operative James Wright served as the model for the "fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled, pig-headed guy" referred to only as the Continental Op. In "Red Harvest," the Op is summoned to Personville (known locally as Poisonville), where he is engaged by newspaper publisher Donald Willson, who is murdered before the agent has an opportunity to meet him. At first the novel feels like a traditional murder mystery; in its first half there are two homicides (among more than two dozen gangland-style assassinations) whose clues are scattered for the reader--and the Op--to solve. Yet the two whodunits are red herrings meant to distract--and entertain--the reader (and crime novel aficionados will figure both of them out within a few paragraphs). Not just a murder mystery, "Red Harvest" pursues broader themes: how corruption and greed poisons the inhabitants of Poisonville, how the Op is able to thwart the ambitions of various criminals by playing their own unprincipled game, and how his own abandonment of professional code nearly destroys the detective himself. Most of the crooks are stock figures from noir central casting, but the novel's femme fatale, Dinah Brand, is the most memorable. She serves not only as foil to the Op's passionless cynicism but also as a warning to the dangers of the sport: like the Op, she insinuates herself into whichever camp is in control, never dirtying her own hands with the unsavory activities that bring her the money she voraciously accumulates--only to find herself expendable when no faction needs her at all. During a flirtatious rendezvous with Dinah, the Op slips into a laudanum-induced dream, in which he imagines himself "hunting for a man I hated. I had an open knife in my pocket and meant to kill him." He finds the man and pursues him across a rooftop, where they tussle near the building's edge, only to realize "that I had gone off the edge of the roof with him." When he awakes, The Op--and the reader--discovers just how near the edge of precipice he has crawled, and the remainder of this perceptive book recounts his journey back from the brink.
Rating:
Summary: Classic novel pits lone PI against the odds.
Review: Dashiell Hammett took the mystery story out of the drawing room and put it squarely into the American street with his stories of his nameless Continental Detective Agency Private Eye during the 1920's. Known as "the Continental Op" Hammett's hero, a short middle aged, slightly fattish loner was a break from the past as regards mystery stories. Hammett, along with Carroll John Daly and other BLACK MASK MAGAZINE pulp writers revolutionized the detective story with their gritty realism and adventurous stories of gats, guns, and molls. RED HARVEST is probably the Continental Op's best know adventure, pitting him against the forces of corruption and crime in a small town named Personville. The Op calls the burg "Poisonville" and the cast of villainous characters that he encounters and goes up against make the nickname quite apt. If you've seen the movies "A Fistful of Dollars", "Last Man Standing", or "Yojimbo" then you have a general idea of what the tale is about. While none of these follows Hammett's intricate plot, the premise of a lone gunman outsmarting and out dueling the whole town is what the story is about. From the time that the Op breezes into town to talk with his client, whom is murdered before the Op can ever meet with him, till the end of the story, there is lots of violence, murder, double dealing and cynical observations by the narrating detective. While we never learn very much about the Op his driven and unswerving dedication to riding the town of any and all opponents takes on the role of obsession and vigilantism by the end of the novel, so much so that the Op himself even begins to have some doubts. Not enough to stop him from completing the job however. Hammett's spare lean style of writing isn't for everybody, especially those who want in-depth character studies where the protagonist spends a lot of time mulling over the state of the universe and his own personal angst. However if you want action and good tight writing then he's your man. A justly acclaimed classic ever since it came out, this novel is the one that started the "hard boiled" school of writing ball rolling.
Rating:
Summary: Posionville--"And Then I Decided to Really Let Him Have It!"
Review: Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest, is an enjoyable book to read because it is entertaining, but, at the same time, worthy of analysis. An anonymous "continental operative," a detective, is summoned to Poisonville on a secret mission by the owner of the town's newspaper and isn't to find out what the reason is until he gets to town. The man that summoned our narrator, the detective, is killed, however, before we or he ever get to figure out what job he is supposed to do. But, because Willsson is dead, the narrator has a job, anyway. In solving this murder, the narrator begins to find more and more crime. Behind one crime there is another, and, after that, another and another. Everywhere he looks there is more scandal and corruption, and in only person in town, a prostitute, can he even find a friend. It's nice reading books where the characters actually go places and do things--Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest is a wonderful alternative to Virginia Woolf.
Rating:
Summary: Poisonville--"And Then I Decided to Really Let Him Have It!"
Review: Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest, is an enjoyable book to read because it is entertaining, but, at the same time, worthy of analysis. An anonymous "continental operative," a detective, is summoned to Poisonville on a secret mission by the owner of the town's newspaper and isn't to find out what the reason is until he gets to town. The man that summoned our narrator, the detective, is killed, however, before we or he ever get to figure out what job he is supposed to do. But, because Willsson is dead, the narrator has a job, anyway. In solving this murder, the narrator begins to find more and more crime. Behind one crime there is another, and, after that, another and another. Everywhere he looks there is more scandal and corruption, and in only person in town, a prostitute, can he even find a friend. The book is pretty entertaining, but it kind of fades out on the last twenty pages or so and loses your attention, at times. It's nice reading books, though, where the characters actually go places and do things--Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest is a wonderful alternative to Virginia Woolf.
Rating:
Summary: LIVE BY THE SWORD
Review: Despite what Europeans say, Americans do have a culture all their own. This is proven by the existence of our own myths, legends, tall tales, archtypes. One of our most repeated myths which you will see repeated in fictions of all kinds, be it films or books, is that of the law coming to tame an uncivilized society. It is merely a shadow of that oldest of myths, namely, of gods giving laws to humans. In Red Harvest, a detective known as the Continental Op is the law, and much like Gods of old, he punishes those who transgress. The Continental Op has been summoned to Personville (also known as Poisonville to those in the know) but when he gets there his client has been murdered. His client's father, a local business bigwig named Elihu Willsson, hires him to clean up the town. You see, to prevent unionization of his companies, he called in all sorts of criminal elements to brutally supress them, whether through hook or crook, or just plain murder. But after doing their job, Elihu cannot just politely ask them to leave. So he offers the Op money to get rid of them any way he can. Out of a sense of outrage, justice, or just plain bloodlust, the Op accepts. This novel almost seems a horror novel to me. There's a lot of blood, lots of murder, and the characters are all creepy and grotesque. For example, one character is described as "a bow-legged man with a long jaw like a hog's". At one point in the bloodshed, the Op talks about "going out to feed" as though he is a vampire who feeds on violence. It reminds me of the demonic descriptions of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. There's something very unsettling in Dashiell Hammett's books. Like H.P. Lovecraft's stories, you always sense some monster moving underneath the prose that might burn your eyes out if you saw it full on. Having said this, except for that feeling of disturbance, Hammett is not the great writer that he is cracked up to be. From the 3 works I have read of his, he's not that much better or worse than the typical contemporary crime writer. His characters seem pretty blank and empty but this actually helps out the stories which usually involve the most animalistic motives. It is an interesting experience to read his books, but I don't know if it's a rewarding or entertaining one. I guess if you want to feel unsettled, ill at ease, check his work out. If you like Red Harvest, there are two other books featuring the same character, The Continental Op, and The Dain Curse. In the end I am more impressed by this author's influence on American myth than the actual bones of his writing.
Rating:
Summary: Bloody,Brutal but the best!
Review: From the moment the book begins,with the reference to Hickey Dewey of Detroit who called his shirt a shoit and Personville Poisonville to the last words in the last chapter, this is probably the best book in ANY genre of writing ive read. Even the chapter names are great. Theres enough gore in it for the blood thirstiest reader and enough class for professors of English literature. Read this and any current action novel will read like a Mills & Boon romance!
|
