Detective-story master Dashiell Hammett gives us yet another unforgettable read in Red Harvest: When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty-even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
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 ci...
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in 1894 in St. Mary's County, Maryland, and his family moved to Baltimore when he was five. He dropped out of high school after his freshman year and held a series of odd jobs-messenger boy,…