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Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective, pretty much invented the hard-boiled (U.S.) detective genre. The influence of Hammett's short stories and novels, "Red Harvest", "The Dain Curse", "The Glass Key", "The Thin Man" and "The Maltese Falcon" can be seen in much of the detective fiction writing that followed, including among others Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, Ross Macdonald, James Ellroy, Robert Parker, James Lee Burke, and Michael Connelly. The plot of "Red Harvest", Hammett's first novel, also found its way into movies such as Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", Sergio Leone's "For a Fistful of Dollars", and the Coen brother's "Miller's Crossing".
"Red Harvest" begins with the arrival of the Continental Op, Hammett's trademark "man with no name" in the town of Personville. The client he has been summoned to see is found murdered before the Op can meet him. In short order the Op finds that Personville's nickname, "Poisonville" is well-earned. It is a town filled with small town greed and big time corruption. The Ops arrival coincides with the onset of a turf war for control of the city between rival gangsters. The Op pays a call on the dead man's father, Elihu Willsson. The Op soon determines that the town's descent into a state approaching a low level of hell began when Willsson imported some mobsters to break up a strike. Their stay turned out to be far from a temporary one.
For reasons of his own, perhaps just to be stubborn or perhaps as a matter of some principle or warrior code, the Op decides to stay and clean up the town. His method is simple, pit each gang and its various factions and sub-factions against each other until the dust settles and it is discovered that they have pretty much killed themselves off. The Op is not afraid to pitch in and help the process along.
As noted above, "Red Harvest" was Hammett's first full length book. Perhaps as a result some of the sentences were longer and more `literary' than his later books, by which time he had perfected a leaner, staccato, machine gun style of dialogue. Nevertheless, "Red Harvest" was and remains an impressive and exciting piece of writing.
"Red Harvest" along with just about everything else Hammett ever wrote is well worth reading.
To complete his mission we have action, surliness, colossal alcohol consumption, corruption and tons of violence. The Op actually lists the 16 people killed so far and we're still only half way through the book. Even the love interest is a lush who gobs on the floor and has a permanent ladder in her stocking.
I had a real problem with the slang to the point that some footnotes would not have gone amiss. There is also a bewildering flurry of a cast who are little more than names rather than characters. Hammett's prose and dialogue is not as slick as his later masterpiece.
A remarkable contrast to the Golden Age crime writing being produced contemporaneously in the UK. Red raw, both politically and stylistically.
Red Harvest is the tale of the Continental Op's trip to the town of Personville, a place universally referred to as Poisonville and filled with enough double-dealing and corruption to make the wire's Baltimore look like Rock Candy Mountain. The Op has been hired by local newspaperman, Donald Willson, son of the town's big industrialist and effective overlord, Elihu Willson, but arrives in town to find his client dead. Soon he's drawn into the ongoing conflict between the town's rival gangs (and its no-less crooked cops) and into long sessions of bartering and drinking with money-loving good-time girl and knowledge-broker Dinah Brand. Shot at one too many times, the Op resolves to clean up the town ... by any means at his disposal.
Red Harvest is a thrill-a-minute, hardboiled tale that rattles along like a mobster's 1920s Ford engaged in a drive-by shooting, but it too often betrays both its pulp origins and the fact it was Hammett's first novel. The tale is episodic, with the Op working his way steadily through the town's mobs, and relies heavily on Dinah Brand's almost-oracular knowledge of Poisonville's double-dealings. The Op is none-too likeable, hardboiled as a 90-minute egg and out to clean-up the town for reasons which are none too clear, even to himself. The writing sometimes lacks the economy and directness to be found in The Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man. Yet, all that sad, there is a great tale in here (good enough to inspire Kurosawa's Yojimbo) and one well worth the read.
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