Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest”

Red Harvest is told in first-person by the Continental Op, a nameless detective and a recurring character in many of Hammett’s stories. He stumbles into the mining town of Personville when a newspaperman contacted him for a job. The Op never finds out the nature of the job, though, as his client is murdered before they could even talk. The story then gets out of control as the Op searches for his client’s killer and he himself is sucked into the spiral of violence and corruption that gave the place its nickname ‘Poisonville.’

I found the novel enjoyable up until the last quarter of it when a plot twist completely threw me off. I won’t reveal much of the action, though, because the greatest strength of Red Harvest lies in its unpredictability. Also, the plot twist did get resolved elegantly at the end. I actually liked it more when I did a quick re-read and marveled at Hammett’s excellent plotting.

What’s neat about the plot is that it’s a series of four mini-mysteries. Every time the Op succeeds in solving one of them, a bigger one gets thrown at him. Adding to the chaos is a cast of morally suspect characters trying to kill, pay or trick him, sometimes all at the same time. All he could depend on is his cunning and his own personal brand of morality. The dialogue is top-class as well, smooth and sharp, exactly the way I like it. The Op’s voice is witty enough that it uplifted a certainly depressing portrait of the American small town, but cynical enough to remain believable. I just wish people still talk like that, all clipped and sexy.

“Didn’t I tell you not to bother me unless you wanted to talk sense for a change?”

“You did, my lad.” There was a foolish sort of triumph in his voice. “And I’ll talk you your sense. I want a man to clean this pig-sty of a Poisonville for me, to smoke out the rats, little and big. It’s a man’s job. Are you a man?”

“What’s the use of getting poetic about it?” I growled. “If you’ve got a fairly honest piece of work to be done in my line, and you want to pay a decent price, maybe I’ll take it on. But a lot of foolishness about smoking rats and pig-pens doesn’t mean anything to me.

“All right. I want Personville emptied of its crooks and grafters. Is that plain enough language for you?”

Since this is an early Hammett novel, some people say that the nameless Op is some kind of beta version for Sam Spade, his iconic character in The Maltese Falcon. I’ve not read that yet, and I’m only familiar with the Bogart movie. Still, the vulnerability buried under contempt that Bogart-Spade displays is different from the Op’s unassuming tenacity.

My final verdict: this novel is pretty good. I just wish I wasn’t befuddled by that plot twist from the left field. >_<;;

Note: This review first appeared in my bookblog Tropical Marginalia. This is an edited version.

Last 5 posts by giyenah

Column: The Filipino Novel Comes of Age - August 7th, 2008
Column: Finding a niche for fiction in local languages - August 5th, 2008
Column: Manga and Monsters - August 5th, 2008
Column: Nabokov's Last Novel Almost Burned and Thoughts on Lost Books - June 30th, 2008
Two Poems: Kenneth Koch and Louise Gluck - April 6th, 2008

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

June 25, 2007 Written by: giyenah | Filed Under Reviews

Comments

One Response to “Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest””

Read Or Die Weblog » Blog Archive » Independent Publishers At The Manila Book Fair on June 27th, 2007 4:10 pm

[…] never-ending spam (not intentional, so sorry): Mia’s review of David Sedaris, Giyenah’s review of Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest” and Yuki’s interesting entry on reading preferences. Still have to reply to various comments, […]

Leave a Reply