Define Books Conducive To Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
Original Title: | Red Harvest |
ISBN: | 0752852612 (ISBN13: 9780752852614) |
Edition Language: | English |
Series: | The Continental Op #1 |
Characters: | The Continental Op, Elihu Willsson, Dinah Brand, Dick Foley |

Dashiell Hammett
ebook | Pages: 224 pages Rating: 3.97 | 21768 Users | 1374 Reviews
Describe Based On Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
Title | : | Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1) |
Author | : | Dashiell Hammett |
Book Format | : | ebook |
Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 224 pages |
Published | : | May 1st 2003 by Orion (first published February 1st 1929) |
Categories | : | Mystery. Fiction. Crime. Noir. Classics |
Chronicle To Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
I’ll give you three good reasons—from least to most—why you should read Red Harvest: 1) it made possible the fine Leone film A Fistful of Dollars, 2) it inspired the Kurosawa masterpiece Iojimbo which influenced A Fistful of Dollars, and 3) it is an old school hard boiled, hardcore novel, with a detective as tough as Spade, Marlowe and Hammer put together, written in hard-as-nails prose, and set in a small West Coast city, a city with a heart of stone. The City is Personville, and people call it “Poisonville,” but not because they are speaking with an accent. A few years before the book opens, mining tycoon and city boss Elihu Wilsson called in some thugs and goons to break a mining strike. Oh they broke it alright, but now these gangsters—with names like Lew Yard, “Whispers,” Pete the Finn—have carved Elihu’s little city into fiefdoms, and Boss Wilsson is not the boss anymore. Our detective, the nameless “Continental Op”--employed by the Continental Detective Agency—soon begins systematically destroying the rival gangs by sowing lies and discord among them. Sure, there is a murder the Op has to solve, but soon, in addition, we have stabbings, ambushes, furtive late night shootings and afternoon gun battles. And a good looking but slatternly gold digger too. Everything a reader could want. At least you’d think so, wouldn’t you, and it would be enough for your average hard-boiled novel. But three-quarters of the way through, the Op begins to realize he likes all this killing, and after drinking too many laudanum-and-gins and dreaming some stone-crazy dope-head dreams, he wakes up to find a bloody ice pick in his hand. Now the Op has one last murder to solve, and he can't exclude himself as a suspect. Red Harvest (1927) is certainly a genre classic, but it is also a great book on any terms. The prose is spare, the metaphors are crisp, and, although the narrative is often crowded with incident, the plot remains simple and clear and close to the bone.Rating Based On Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
Ratings: 3.97 From 21768 Users | 1374 ReviewsAssess Based On Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
The review is updated yet again on January 20, 2020.I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went toMy second time reading this and i saw things i missed the first time. Some nuances of the characters,dialouge,the authors world view. I dont re-read ever but i should re-read this every two years when i forgot little of the mystery,the work The OP is doing in Posionville.This novel is a true literary Masterwork that makes you understand why Hammett has the reputation he has in mainstream American Literature let alone in crime,noir fiction.It is a great,fun,bleak hardboiled PI story. Also
Ill give you three good reasonsfrom least to mostwhy you should read Red Harvest: 1) it made possible the fine Leone film A Fistful of Dollars, 2) it inspired the Kurosawa masterpiece Iojimbo which influenced A Fistful of Dollars, and 3) it is an old school hard boiled, hardcore novel, with a detective as tough as Spade, Marlowe and Hammer put together, written in hard-as-nails prose, and set in a small West Coast city, a city with a heart of stone.The City is Personville, and people call it

I've always been the dissenting opinion on this one. Yeah, it was influential, but since Hammett himself was copying John Carroll Daly's new hardboiled style, maybe we should give him a bit of the credit. Cynical and definitely hardboiled, Hammetts Red Harvest is missing the one ingredient which might have made it work for me Raymond Chandler. Compare this to Raymond Chandlers first novel, The Big Sleep. Both novels have elements cannibalized from their respective pulp stories, both have bodies
And Millers Crossing! Inspired by this and (mostly) The Glass Key.
In each fictional genre, (war, romance, western, mystery, etc) there are usually a few books which that genre's fans near-unanimously consider to be holy; sacred: icons, landmarks, milestones. In any genre's canon there are sometimes only as few as 2-3 of the very most-revered relics--invoking the greatest and most unqualified renown among fans--or (though it happens rarely) even just one. This is the case when it comes to hard-boiled American pulp crime fiction from the 1930s; this is the case
The setting is actually interestingly in the Rocky Mountain Westa town called Butte, MT, not a coastal town:
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