Red Harvest: A Continental Op Crime Novel

Welcome to Personville—known to its own citizens as Poisonville—a town so corrupt it is choking on blood, money, and fear. When the Continental Op arrives after the murder of a newspaper publisher, he finds a city owned by industrial power, crooked officials, gang bosses, hired killers, and double-crossing survivors. There is no clean case to solve here. The whole town is the crime scene. Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest is hard-boiled crime fiction at its most raw and ruthless. The Op does not bring justice to Poisonville so much as set its corrupt factions against one another until the bodies begin to fall. With relentless pacing, razor-edged dialogue, political cynicism, and a moral atmosphere as gray as gun smoke, this 1929 classic helped define American noir and changed the shape of detective fiction. Mean, lean, violent, and unsentimental, Red Harvest remains one of the great novels of corruption, vengeance, and crime without illusions. About the Author Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) was an American crime writer whose work helped create the modern hard-boiled detective tradition. Born in Maryland, Hammett worked for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency before turning to fiction, and his experience as a detective gave his stories a realism, toughness, and procedural authority that changed American crime writing. His fiction moved detective stories away from drawing-room puzzles and into a world of corruption, violence, political power, and compromised institutions. Hammett’s major works include Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man. His characters, especially the Continental Op and Sam Spade, became models for later hard-boiled detectives: observant, unsentimental, morally pressured, and deeply aware of the corruption around them. Hammett’s prose is spare, sharp, and controlled, with dialogue and action carrying much of the force. For readers of classic noir, hard-boiled mystery, American crime fiction, detective fiction, and pulp literature, Hammett remains one of the essential writers of the twentieth century.
ASIN: 1515465454
VSKU: PKV.1515465454.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Hammett, Dashiell
Binding: Paperback
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: A well-loved companion. Corners and cover might show a little wear, and you could find some notes or highlights. The dust jacket might be MIA, it might have been a library book and extras aren't guaranteed—but the story's all there!