RED HARVEST

Red Harvest (1929) is a novel by American writer 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 (fictionalized as the Continental Detective Agency). The plot follows the Op's investigation of several murders amid a labor dispute in a corrupt Montana mining town. Some of the novel was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a 1920 labor dispute in the mining town of Butte, Montana. Time included Red Harvest in its 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005, noting that, in the Continental Op, Hammett "created the prototype for every sleuth who would ever be called 'hard-boiled.'" The Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide called the book "a remarkable achievement, the last word in atrocity, cynicism, and horror." Red Harvest was originally serialized in four installments in the pulp magazine Black Mask: Part 1: "The Cleansing of Poisonville", Black Mask, November 1927 Part 2: "Crime Wanted—Male or Female", Black Mask, December 1927 Part 3: "Dynamite", Black Mask, January 1928 Part 4: "The 19th Murder", Black Mask, February 1928