Red Harvest


Red Harvest is a novel by Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by the Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction, much of which is drawn from his own experiences as an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The labor dispute in the novel was inspired by Butte's Anaconda Road massacre.
Time included Red Harvest in its 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide called the book "a remarkable achievement, the last word in atrocity, cynicism, and horror."

Serial publication

Red Harvest was originally serialized in four installments in the pulp magazine Black Mask:
The Continental Op is called to Personville by the newspaper publisher Donald Willsson, who is murdered before the Op has a chance to meet with him. The Op begins to investigate Willsson's murder and meets with Willsson's father, Elihu Willsson, a local industrialist who has found his control of the city threatened by several competing gangs. Elihu had originally invited those gangs into Personville to help him impose and then enforce the end of a labor dispute.
The Op extracts a promise and a signed letter from Elihu that pays the Continental Detective Agency, the Op's employer, $10,000 in exchange for cleaning up the city and ridding it of the gangs. When the Op solves Donald's murder, Elihu tries to renege on the deal, but the Op will not allow him to do so.
In the meantime, the Op is spending time with Dinah Brand, a possible love interest of the late Donald Willsson and a moll for Max "Whisper" Thaler, a local gangster. Using information from Brand and Personville's crooked chief of police, Noonan, the Op manages to extract and spread incriminating information to all of the warring parties. When the Op reveals that a bank robbery was staged by the cops and one of the mobs to discredit another mob, a gang war erupts.
The Op wakes up the next morning, though, to find Brand stabbed to death with the ice pick the Op handled the previous evening. No signs of forced entry are visible. The Op becomes a suspect sought by the police for Brand's murder, and one of his fellow operatives, Dick Foley, leaves Personville because he is uncertain of the Op's innocence.
The Op, now wanted by the police, entices Reno Starkey, a gang lieutenant, to take on the last strong rival mob, led by Pete the Finn. The last gangs are whittled down by pipe bombs, arson, gun fights, and corrupt cops gunning down the survivors.
The Op tracks down Starkey, the only gang leader still alive. Starkey is bleeding from four gunshot wounds, having just killed mobster Whisper Thaler. Starkey reveals that he was the one who stabbed Brand, and that she had collided with the semiconscious Op so he looked like the culprit.
The corrupt police chief Noonan and the gang leaders are all dead. The Op blackmails Elihu Willsson into calling the governor, who sends in the National Guard, declares martial law, and suspends the entire police force. Elihu Willsson gets back his town, as promised, although not in the way that he had anticipated. The Op returns to San Francisco, where the Old Man gives him "merry hell" for his activities.

Characters

Red Harvest was adapted for the 1930 film Roadhouse Nights, starring Helen Morgan, Fred Kohler, and Jimmy Durante. Many major elements of the book were changed in the film, including most of the characters' names, and the film is not considered a faithful adaptation.
Akira Kurosawa scholar David Desser and critic Manny Farber, among others, state that Red Harvest was the inspiration for Kurosawa's film Yojimbo. Other scholars, such as Donald Richie, believe the similarities are coincidental. Kurosawa said that a major source for the plot was the film noir classic The Glass Key, an adaption of Hammett's 1931 novel of the same name. In Red Harvest, The Glass Key, and Yojimbo, corrupt officials and businessmen stand behind and profit from the rule of gangsters. Other films based on Yojimbo include Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing.
In the early 1970s, Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci considered filming an adaptation of the novel and wrote a first draft infused with political themes typical of his work. A short while after, he wrote a second draft that was more faithful to Hammett's story. For the role of the Op he considered Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. At some point, Bertolucci discussed this project with Warren Beatty in Rome. In 1982, Bertolucci moved to Los Angeles to begin production, but the project was shelved.

In popular culture

Film

The Coen brothers' film Blood Simple takes its title from a line in Red Harvest in which the Op tells Brand the escalating violence has affected his mental state: "This damned burg's getting me. If I don't get away soon, I'll be going blood-simple like the natives." The Coens' film Miller's Crossing employs stylistic and narrative elements of Hammett's Red Harvest, The Glass Key, and several of Hammett's shorter works.
The dialogue and plot of director Rian Johnson's debut feature, Brick, was inspired by the novels of Dashiell Hammett, particularly Red Harvest.
The first synopsis to the Star Wars movies was dubbed project ”Blue Harvest” by George Lucas in homage to Hammet’s Red Harvest..

Literature

Science-fiction writer David Drake has said that he took the plot of his novel The Sharp End from Red Harvest.