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Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)

Dashiell Hammett

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Jun 09, 2017 Dave rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-fiction-all, crime-fiction-pulp, 100-top-crime-fiction, continental-op-series, crime-fiction-hardboiled

"Red Harvest” was originally published in serial form in 1927 and 1928 and published as a novel in 1929. It is Hammett’s first novel involving the Continental Op and it is dark, gloomy, and as hardboiled as it gets. There are other hardboiled novels that feature a detective or other person coming into a corrupt town and trying to solve a murder when no one wants to help him and every hand is turned against him, but many such novels by Spillane, MacDonald, and Latimer came a decade or two after R ...more

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May 05, 2012 Simon rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1920s, crime-fiction, reviewed

This might very well be one of the 5 most influential novels in the crime genre's history. Not only did its basic premise in the cinematic medium inspire both Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" and Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" when transplanted to different settings. It also represents the breaking away from the escapism typified by the Arthur Conan Doyles and Agatha Christies of the world into the more realistic and serious territory much of the genre inhabits today.

As a literary milestone, it This might very well be one of the 5 most influential novels in the crime genre's history. Not only did its basic premise in the cinematic medium inspire both Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" and Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" when transplanted to different settings. It also represents the breaking away from the escapism typified by the Arthur Conan Doyles and Agatha Christies of the world into the more realistic and serious territory much of the genre inhabits today.

As a literary milestone, it's also interesting to see how the genre's tropes haven't crystallized yet while still being present in their primordial forms. The unnamed detective who narrates the story is nowhere as glamorous a figure as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, the requisite dysfunctional upper-class family is neither as colourful in its decadence nor as large as would later become the norm of the genre, and none of the story's major players are very successful at manipulating each other as planned.

More important, though, is that "Red Harvest" an extremely well-constructed story that moves quickly while constantly taking new twists and turns, never coming across as unbelievable. The plot is somewhat complex considering its short length, but it never becomes confusing unless when it's meant to. There's also much well-written action, which is surprisingly graphic in its violence considering the book's 1929 publication date. Likewise does the Continental Op, as the main character is called, have an amusing sense of subtle gallows humour.

It's not perfect, though. The prose is often somewhat plain, especially compared to Hammett's protegé and contemporary Raymond Chandler whose every sentence seems to give off sparks of radiant energy. The same thing goes for the characterization: While some of this story's protagonists here are rather interesting people, just as many of them don't have as many dimensions to them.

The fictional Midwestern mining town of Personville (or "Poisonville") the story takes place in also never feels completely like a real city, but that might be by design: Sometimes it comes across as a Midwestern version of those creepy provincial towns that certain horror writers from New England create to set their stories in!

As rough-around-the-edges as "Red Harvest" might be, it is nonetheless one of those classics which still hold up well today even though newer novels have definitely improved upon it. ...more

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Feb 10, 2016 Tom Britz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Red Harvest is what hard-drinking, wise-cracking detective noir is all about. This story was written around 1927 and looking around today I see not much has changed. This is a story of a corrupt mid-sized town and the detective sent in to clean it up. He is not a by-the-book kind of detective. Bodies were falling faster than pins on bowling night. It is a fast-paced read and it was fun seeing how the roaring twenties were.

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