Red Harvest

Red Harvest, first novel written by American master of detective fiction Dashiell Hammett. Originally published as a four-part serial in the monthly magazine Black Mask beginning in November 1927, it first appeared as a novel in 1929.

Red Harvest is narrated by a nameless operative of the Continental Detective Agency who is known as the Continental Op. Hammett had himself worked as an investigator for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, and he was therefore able to bring a strong sense of realism to his construction of the narrator. The Op is summoned to the California mining town of Personville—dryly and aptly called by its residents “Poisonville”—by Donald Willson, the editor of the local newspaper, but Willson is killed before the Op has a chance to meet him.

The Op learns that the town is run by the local magnate, Willson’s father, Elihu Willsson. More than a decade earlier, Ehihu Willson had hired thugs and goons to put down a strike at the town’s mine, and then they had taken control of the town, which was now run by several criminal factions. After someone tries to kill Elihu, he hires the Op to clean up the town. However, after learning that Donald Willson had paid Dinah Brand, a hustling femme fatale, for information on corruption, and a jealous suitor of Dinah had killed Donald, Elihu tells the Op to stop investigating. The Op refuses.

The novel is structured around the machinations of the private detective as he plays off each group of corrupt players against the others, including the police. Much of the plotting centers around Dinah. The dark picture of contemporary American life is further enhanced by the fact that the Op himself is morally ambiguous. When, after drinking laudanum with Dinah, he wakes up to find that Dinah has been stabbed to death by an ice pick that is in his hand, even he thinks that he might have killed her. By the end of the novel, a bloodbath has cleansed the town of its gangsters. The Op, who learns who Dinah’s murderer is and that Elihu’s love for Dinah was a factor, returns to San Francisco.

The Op’s approach to sorting out corruption is as stark and lawless as it is effective. In Red Harvest, classic detective fiction formulas—including that of the heroic investigator—are dispensed with, as Hammett develops the characteristics of the hard-boiled genre he is credited with creating.