Red Harvest

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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.

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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.

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Summary: Clearly Hammett's Best
Review: Of all the books written by the chronological trio of Hammett, Chandler, and MacDonald, only Red Harvest seems as honest and truthful now as I am sure it did in 1939. Although Hammett lacks Chandler's writing flare and sarcasm, his style makes for fast-paced, edge of the seat reading. As his Continental Op escapes harrowing situation after another, I was left with a disbelief, but this novel is not about whether the Op could ruin an entire town with merely a scratch. It is instead a commentary on society, and on the cutthroat nature still evident in us all. In so many ways, this novel reminds me of Shirley Jackson's haunting story "The Lottery" because the evil in our world is within the system, and in each person. Just as the Op confesses to wanting to join the killing spree, Hammett has made us want to read about more killing. He dupes us into playing the Op's game. This novel is so much deeper than what can be read in the text. In his own way, he tells us to look out for a system corrupted by greed and a quest for power. Much like Chandler, Hammett always has a message. Heed this one readers, but enjoy the enchantment of this amazing novel.

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Summary: Solid hard-boiled detecive novel inspired 3 films
Review: Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, is a tense, fast-paced well written tale of Hammett's hero, The Continental OP, cleaning up a criminal-ridden town by setting all the various factions againts each other. I enjoyed this novel, though I prefer Raymond Chandler's style to Hammett's. Hammett's is a little more sparse. However, if you searching for a good introduction to the genre, here's a good place to start.Trivia note: This novel has inspred three movies (none credited the book as inspiration). Toshiro Mifune as a samurai in YOJIMBO; Clint Eastwood as the man with No Name in FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and more recently, Bruce Willis in LAST MAN STANDING.

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Summary: Vastly Underrated!
Review: This was the first novel featuring Hammett's short story character, The Continental Op, and it's well worth reading. The Op is sent from his home in San Francisco to Personville, Montana on the request of a client. The fact that Personville is pronounced posionville by its residents will tell you the kind of town he enters. The violence is so bad that the Op never actually sees his client alive, but he sticks around to avenge his death. The deep plot is as convoluted as any detective novel, but the basic plot of a man playing two sides against each other proved to be important in the history of film even more so than literature.

The Op was the original Man With No Name. Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western borrows both the stranger concept and the plot from Red Harvest. Though the credit is usually given to Akira Kurosawa for his film Yojimbo, both films actually borrow their essence from Hammett.

It's not necessary to have seen either film to enjoy this story. Overshadowed by the classic Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest deserves more ink than it gets. It's here with Hammett that the noir detective novel was born. The romantic notion of a poor detective who would rather live up to his own standards of justice than take a big payoff is a very American outlook. I can only figure that such a character comes from the many assignments that Hammett got working for the Pinkerton detective agency and the many times that Hammett wasn't allowed to do the right thing. Our detective is so virtuous under the standards of his own ethics that you admire him even when he is creating a bloodbath.

The most surprising thing is how well the whole book flows and quickly I read it. Hammett has a great way of leaving each chapter with enough questions that you want to immediately read the next one. He'll leave you with the conclusion of a boxing match and with a fighter that falls over with a knife in his back. How can you go to sleep on a chapter like that?

Any fan of detective novels and film noir should do themselves the justice of reading all the Hammett they can get. Red Harvest is a good start to that goal.