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Red Harvest (The Continental Op Book 1) Kindle Edition
Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage Crime/Black Lizard
- Publication dateDecember 29, 2010
- File size3311 KB
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Dashiell Hammett is an original. He is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." -- Boston Globe
"Hammett's prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction."
--The New York Times
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B004G8P2M8
- Publisher : Vintage Crime/Black Lizard; Reprint edition (December 29, 2010)
- Publication date : December 29, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 3311 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 166 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #219,224 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,066 in Hard-Boiled Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- #2,057 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- #2,567 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (/ˈsæmjʊəl dəˈʃiːl ˈhæmət/; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, a screenplay writer, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse).
In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in The New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." Time magazine included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on a list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Customer reviews
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The series continues with novel The Dain Curse and a collection of stories The Continental Op. If you're a fan of detective stories, or even if you're not , they're all worth a look.
You could easily get the impression that Red Harvest is a murder mystery novel. While not entirely wrong, that impression would be misleading. There are murder mysteries solved in Red Harvest, but they are a only a small part of the plot, and are solved only in passing. Rather, Red Harvest is a western transplanted to an early twentieth century mining town. Specifically, it's one of the those westerns in which a new sheriff comes to a town that the bad guys have ruined and cleans it up. The person who ruined Personville (AKA Poisonville) was old Elihu Willsson, the mining magnate who owns everything. Long before the novel begins, Willsson's miners struck, and he put the strike down
"Old Elihu didn’t know his Italian history. He won the strike, but he lost his hold on the city and the state. To beat the miners he had to let his hired thugs run wild. When the fight was over he couldn’t get rid of them. He had given his city to them and he wasn’t strong enough to take it away from them. Personville looked good to them and they took it over. They had won his strike for him and they took the city for their spoils. He couldn’t openly break with them. They had too much on him. He was responsible for all they had done during the strike."
The Continental Op shows up, brought to town by Elihu's son Donald, who is killed before the Op meets him. He convinces old Eilhu to give the Continental Detective Agency $10,000 and a free hand to clean up Personville, and he does it, with bullets and blood and fire -- a Red Harvest indeed.
Personally I enjoyed the opportunity to compare and contrast this novel to that of modern private detective authors and stories. One of my personal favorite modern authors of detective fiction is Sue Grafton. In hr first novel "A is for Alibi" her protagonist encounters a pet dog named Dashiell. I am quite sure that is an acknowledgement of Dashiell Hammett.
The story itself has a tough, cynical feel to it. There is a good deal of violence that seeemd to me to, at times, approach open warfare. That was the most unrealistic aspect of the story to me.
As in numerous works of American Fiction from this period there are ethnic terms used that are no longer considered acceptable. The one I noted repeated more than once is a dated term about individuals of Italian Heritage. I do not believe in censorship but I do not wish anyone to be caught by an unpleasant surprise if one chooses to read this novel. There is also a slang term used to describe a person suffering from tuberculosis. Dashiell Hammett suffered from tuberculosis so I speculate he felt the term was acceptable to himself.
In summary I enjoyed this novel and am glad that I read it. It has a definite Pulp Noir feel to it. It is mostly an easy read except for the numerous characters that I occasionally became confused about. I intend to re read some works by Dashiell Hammett in the future such as "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man". Thank You...
There are too many long sentences of no consequence simply listing off what the character was doing: “I walked around a few blocks until I came to an unlighted electric sign that said Hotel Crawford, climbed a flight of steps to the second-floor office, registered, left a call for ten o’clock, was shown into a shabby room, moved some of the scotch from the flask to my stomach, and too old Elihu’s ten-thousand dolar check and my gun to bed with me.” These things made slogging through the book a chore. Despite giving each character its driver's license description - height, hair color, weight, etc. - there isn’t much characterization and very little to distinguish one thug from another.
There isn’t one actual central plot here, but a series of plots connected by the same main character - the nameless Continental OP - and the city. Many have compared this to a Western, rather than a private eye novel. There’s a new sheriff in town and he's gonna clean the place up whether people like it or not. I’ve seen this film before. I’ve read this book before. It certainly was an influential book when first being published in 1929, but it's done over and over again, and is simply one among many. It is hard boiled. It is unyielding. None of the characters are anything but corrupt. All those elements should make an interesting book. Yet, I still nearly quit several times, beating myself up to finish the damn thing.
Top reviews from other countries
Lots of mobs, a web of corruption, and one guy trying to take the whole system down.
Sounds ridiculous? Read, it’s quite interesting
It’s a bloody mess with constant betrayal and manipulation, and new mysteries jumping in left and right.
Only issue, I can’t understand half of what these men are saying sometimes. Oh well, different time.
The pace in this book is never slacking, the Op lands in poison(person)ville & before you get to page two, you are sucked into its wild world. Hammett throws his detective into a psychopath's wet dream of a place in poisonville. Corrupt cops, tycoons, gangsters, femme fatales, seductress everything that is now a common trope is utilized & although there are many flaws.
The plot is a revolving door of characters, who rarely expand beyond their stereotypical roles. Op, working for continetal leads you into story, but even the title character has little to no dimension. Plot armor for Op is another glaring flaw, which could have been avoided if there was subtlety introduced into hammet's approach. However, it still works as this seems like exactly what hammett was going for & although it feels amateur it doesn't hold back the fun of reading this classic.
In case you are diving into hammett, as I did after being introduced to Chandler. Then Hammett is no Chandler, the dialogues lack the wit & plot is not enticing to keep you occupied. Hammett's red harvest excels as a working man's hard boiled detective novel, with enough gut punches to keep you reeling & some more.