![]() ![]() ![]() This makes Red Harvest sound like a Western, and in some ways it is. Everyone he comes up against – whether businessmen, politicians or policemen – is corrupt, and the Op makes it his mission to drive these factions out of town by setting them against one another. It’s not long before this quest becomes personal, and the Op quickly discovers why the town’s alternative name of ‘Poisonville’ is particularly apt. ![]() Before he can do so, the client is killed, and the Op is left trying to figure out what happened. Red Harvest has Hammett’s agency detective, the always unnamed ‘Continental Operative’ travelling to Personville to meet with a client. As Galatians 6:7 so eloquently puts it, ‘ Be not deceived God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Although it’s not referenced in the text, given the level of violence Red Harvest contains you can probably guess why Hammett named it the way he did. Given its predecessor it had a lot to live up to, so it’s not surprising that it doesn’t quite make it but there’s still plenty worth talking about, not least that vivid title. Red Harvest was Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, and the second that I’ve read, after The Maltese Falcon. ‘Chandler wrote the kind of guy that he wanted to be, Hammett wrote the kind of guy that he was afraid he was.’ ![]()
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