Red Harvest
by Dashiell Hammett
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This is one of those books I love beyond a number of other “better” works of art, so don’t expect a balanced and overly critical review. Not that the book isn't fantastic.
My very first exposure to Hammett was the novella, Woman in the Dark, published separately as a slender volume which I read in college. I knew very little about Hammett save he was supposed to be the man who inspired Chandler and I loved Chandler as much back then as I do today. The edition I read was this long skinny...more
My very first exposure to Hammett was the novella, Woman in the Dark, published separately as a slender volume which I read in college. I knew very little about Hammett save he was supposed to be the man who inspired Chandler and I loved Chandler as much back then as I do today. The edition I read was this long skinny...more
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Read in October, 2007
Reading Kevin Starr's bang-up summary of California's labor history at the beginning of Endangered Dreams, I was visited with an uncontrollable hankering to read Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. For the umpteenth time. Somewhere in my apartment there is a tattered old Vintage pocketbook edition, which I have read almost to the point of disintegration, along with all my other Vintage pocket editions of Hammett's novels and Continental Op short story collections. Somewhere is so close to nowhere....more
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This subject is probably discussed at great scholarly length elsewhere (perhaps in Joshua Waletsky's 1999 documentary "Dashiell Hammett: Detective, Writer") but, at the moment, I'm not sure where, so I'll add my 2¢'s worth: "Red Harvest" is about a detective hired to 'clean up' a town who pits various gangsters against each other in the process & destabilizes the criminal community into a bloodbath, a Red Harvest. The detective becomes increasingly psychotic as he begin...more
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Militant high brows and low brows agree, this is one of America's coolest novels. Dirty, violent, hardboiled and yes, every character swigs down cheap booze in every chapter. But Red Harvest will always defy the cliche's, and its not just because it is the source for most of them. On its surface, Red Harvest is a detective story (although most of the reviews on this site think its about Yojimbo) but what its really about is Fascism. Dashiell Hammett may be the only great detective writer to actu...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
noir fans
"Here's how she stacks up. Pete's throwed in with McGraw. That lines coppers and beer mob up against me and Whisper. But hell! Me and Whisper are busier trying to put the chive in each other than bucking the combine. That's a sour racket. While we're tangling, them bums will eat us up."
This is a masterpiece of crime fiction. If any book ever got the language right, this one did. This work is plot heavy (to put it lightly) and by the time you thought you'd figured out which...more
This is a masterpiece of crime fiction. If any book ever got the language right, this one did. This work is plot heavy (to put it lightly) and by the time you thought you'd figured out which...more
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Read in June, 2008
I am somewhat conflicted by this book.
On one hand, the plot, the actual narrative, didn't really interest me. Lot's of double-crosses, tough guys, dames, and characters with cool names like Whisper and Pete the fin. I feel as though the book is too long for the story being told, and I struggled to keep my interest up.
On the other hand, Hammett's prose is brilliant. His choice of words, his phrasing, and the rhythm of the dialog is second to none - it blew my mind. I can't imagine rea...more
On one hand, the plot, the actual narrative, didn't really interest me. Lot's of double-crosses, tough guys, dames, and characters with cool names like Whisper and Pete the fin. I feel as though the book is too long for the story being told, and I struggled to keep my interest up.
On the other hand, Hammett's prose is brilliant. His choice of words, his phrasing, and the rhythm of the dialog is second to none - it blew my mind. I can't imagine rea...more
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Read in June, 2008
I wanted to like this more than I actually did. I like Hammett's stripped-down language. No fat in his prose. Love his cynicism and the way the Continental Op blows into town and stirs shit up.
Dialogue is sweet too: "Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me last night. I don't like that. I'm just mean enough to want to ruin him for it. Now I'm going to have my fun."
Yeah, great, but there's a LOT of expository dialogue. I guess that's necessary to keep the novel...more
Dialogue is sweet too: "Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me last night. I don't like that. I'm just mean enough to want to ruin him for it. Now I'm going to have my fun."
Yeah, great, but there's a LOT of expository dialogue. I guess that's necessary to keep the novel...more
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This is one of the defining narratives of the 20th century: a single man destroys evil in a town by pitting all of the evildoers against each other. It was the unacknowledged model for Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which in turn inspired A Fistful of Dollars and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing.
Beyond its influence, it is one of the densest mystery stories ever written. It was published serially, so every chapter contains a mystery to be solved. Unlike weaker mystery writers, (including Chandler, who ...more
Beyond its influence, it is one of the densest mystery stories ever written. It was published serially, so every chapter contains a mystery to be solved. Unlike weaker mystery writers, (including Chandler, who ...more
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Read in February, 2008
A blood- and gin-soaked hardboiled detective novel, noir before there was noir. Kinda goes like this for about 200 pages:
"There was a time when I wanted to be left alone. If I had been, maybe now I'd be riding back to San Francisco. But I wasn't. Especially I wasn't left alone by that fat Noonan. He's had two tries at my scalp in two days. That's plenty. Now it's my turn to run him ragged, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It's a job I like, a...more
"There was a time when I wanted to be left alone. If I had been, maybe now I'd be riding back to San Francisco. But I wasn't. Especially I wasn't left alone by that fat Noonan. He's had two tries at my scalp in two days. That's plenty. Now it's my turn to run him ragged, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It's a job I like, a...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
disillusioned detectives, curious Kurosawa fans
i picked this book up a few weeks after finishing The Maltese Falcon and a few days after finding out it was the inspiration (partly) for Kurosawa's Yojimbo. at the end of the day, there's nothing quite like watching a surly Toshiro Mifune rub his beard and contemplate how best to reduce two warring Japanese gangs to ruin, but reading about Hammett's Continental Op is also pretty amusing. the Op isn't so much a character as a guy who runs around, does stuff, solves mysteries, all the while downi...more
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Dashiell Hammett is unjustifiable categorized by many as a "crime novelist." His books deserve, especially Red Harvest, to be considered alongside those by O'Connor, Hemingway, and others. His writing is clean, spare, direct and his plots and characters inhabit a world of ethical dilemmas which are explored with a clear-eyed perspective that doesn't judge. And the stories are just damn-good reads besides with ripsnorting adventure that seems to hide intelligence underneath. Red Har...more
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Read in July, 2008
I decided that I wanted to learn what "hard-boiled fiction" was all about, so I started with a master of the genre, Dashiell Hammett. As far as I can tell, hard-boiled fiction is when the detective becomes part of the action rather than an observer, and the detective is usually a rough, no-nonsense sort of guy.
Red Harvest is about gang warfare in a midwestern town, and it was just ok. The main character is a pretty bad guy. So, since the reader wants resolution to the conflict in ...more
Red Harvest is about gang warfare in a midwestern town, and it was just ok. The main character is a pretty bad guy. So, since the reader wants resolution to the conflict in ...more
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Read in January, 2002
If you have any interest in the hard-boiled detective genre, then you have to read Red Harvest. It is probably THE work that best makes the case for the American hard-boiled detective genre as an inheritor of the Western. Set in a western mining town called Personville ("Poisonville," by the locals) during Prohibition, it has more tough talk, slung lead, and explosions than an '80s Schwarzeneggar flick--and without the hammy one-liners and flexing posturing. The dialog sounds real, and...more
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A bloody, bloody book. Hammett has a facility with prose. And the mood he captures is half the point. Yet the view of humanity espoused here (decidedly grim) makes this one hard to recommend to my grandmother.
I jumped head first into Hammett seeking the DNA of American crime/noir fiction. This is Hammett's first novel, and it is apparently based on his pre-author career as a private dick. But is the Continental Op Hammett's doppelganger? Let's hope our dear author didn't churn up that much ...more
I jumped head first into Hammett seeking the DNA of American crime/noir fiction. This is Hammett's first novel, and it is apparently based on his pre-author career as a private dick. But is the Continental Op Hammett's doppelganger? Let's hope our dear author didn't churn up that much ...more
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Read in March, 2008
Entertaining. It gets a little repetitive- the narrator cleans up a corrupt town one bad guy at a time- which probably explains why it's one of the few Hammett books that wasn't made into a movie. Hammett's a great writer, and, as with The Maltese Falcon, some of the best parts are those that don't closely fit the story line, like a sequence in which he describes a series of dreams that the narrator has. I'd still probably read The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man first, but this works as a fine ...more
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Read in July, 2008
Great noir, with an even darker edge than usual. The double-crosses come thick and fast, and the narrator shows interesting (and not all that typical) development.
(I think I picked this one up because it was referenced here and there as inspiration for both _Yojimbo_ (and by extension _A Fistful of Dollars_) and _Miller's Crossing_, both favorites of mine. Certainly, none of those films is a direct adaptation, but you can see the elements there. If you're a fan of any of those films, you mig...more
(I think I picked this one up because it was referenced here and there as inspiration for both _Yojimbo_ (and by extension _A Fistful of Dollars_) and _Miller's Crossing_, both favorites of mine. Certainly, none of those films is a direct adaptation, but you can see the elements there. If you're a fan of any of those films, you mig...more
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Holy BeJesus!!
This is a noir with the most winding plot I have read!
Dashiell Hammett is a master! I am confident that Mr. Hammett and Raymond Chandler are the two best noir writers, but I can't pick the best.
While Raymond Chandler writes noir with emotion and soul, Hammett writes with fluidity and intelligence (not that Chandler doesn't).
Besides, Hammett writes female characters that are not arm coasters for men. His women are tough and controlling, like you would expect any mob ...more
This is a noir with the most winding plot I have read!
Dashiell Hammett is a master! I am confident that Mr. Hammett and Raymond Chandler are the two best noir writers, but I can't pick the best.
While Raymond Chandler writes noir with emotion and soul, Hammett writes with fluidity and intelligence (not that Chandler doesn't).
Besides, Hammett writes female characters that are not arm coasters for men. His women are tough and controlling, like you would expect any mob ...more
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Easily the strangest of Hammett's books, though without the narrative unity of The Maltese Falcon or the bleakness of The Glass Key. The Op drifts into town for one job, solves the initial murder early on, and spends the rest of the book kicking the town to pieces for the fun of it. A sickening, cynical revolt against political corruption and the poison of society. Also gave us the
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Read in January, 1983
recommended to Ben by:
some lunatic in a barrecommends it for: anyone running against a Republican
I love Hammett's other stuff too (though his earliest stories are not up to the standards of his later material), and The Maltese Falcon will always be one of my favorite novels, but this one was the inspiration for both Kurosawa's Yojimbo and the Coen Bros' Miller's Crossing. Plus the great Wayne Kramer was inspired by this masterpiece to write the song The Czar of Poisonville, which he performed on his album with fellow guitar strangler Brian James.
I rest my case.
I rest my case.
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recommends it for:
the hard boiled
Don't read this one until you've read the Continental Op short stories, as many of them as possible. This book also features the Op, and the full impact of it won't hit you unless you know his character well. You can read it and it will still be good because Hammett is brilliant, but it won't be the same. This one blew me away, and for awhile I liked it better than the Falcon, despite that one's noir perfection.
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