Red Harvest

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This article deals with the Dashiell Hammett novel called Red Harvest. For the Norwegian heavy metal band, see: Red Harvest (band)

Red Harvest (1929) is a novel by Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by a nameless detective, The Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction. It is structured as a fix-up, a series of separate short stories linked by new material. Hammett based the anarchic background on his own experiences in Butte, Montana during the labor troubles.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Continental Op finds himself called to Personville (which is known as "Poisonville" by the locals) by Donald Willsson, who is murdered before the Op has a chance to meet with him. The Op begins to work on the murder case and meets with Willsson's father, Elihu, a local industrialist who has found his control of the city's economy threatened by several competing gangs whom he himself had originally invited into his city to "resolve" a labor dispute.

The Op extracts a promise and a signed letter from Elihu that pays the Op $10,000 in exchange for cleaning up the city. When the Op solves Donald's murder, Elihu tries to renege on the deal, but the Op won't allow him to do so.

In the meantime, the Op finds himself spending time with Dinah Brand, a possible love interest of Donald Willson's as well as a moll for the local gangster Max "Whisper" Thaler. Between Brand and the crooked chief of police, Noonan, the Op manages to extract and spread most of the information he needs to set off a gang war among the four major local factions.

One night at Brand's apartment, the Op passes out from a combination of alcohol and laudanum. He wakes up the next morning to find Brand stabbed to death with the icepick the Op had used that evening, with no visible signs of forced entry. The Op ends up a suspect sought by the police for this murder, and one of his fellow operatives ends up leaving Personville because he is unsure of the Op's innocence.

The story ends as the Op finds Reno Starkey, the only one of the four main gangsters still alive, bleeding from a four-bullet gunshot wound. Reno reveals that it was he who stabbed Brand, and that when she fell she collided with the semi-conscious Op, coincidently landing in a position which made the Op look like the culprit. Reno has also just killed Whisper, and after his own death, Elihu can restore his control over the town.

The story is believed to have been based in part upon Hammett's own experiences with violent labor strife, and its aftermath, in Butte, Montana and other Western boom towns.

[edit] Film adaptations

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Red Harvest has been directly adapted into a film only one time, as Roadhouse Nights (1930), starring Jimmy Durante. Many major elements of the book have been changed in the film, including most of the characters' names, and the film is not considered a faithful adaptation.

It has been frequently asserted—though never officially corroborated—that the plot of Red Harvest was the inspiration for the film Yojimbo (1961) by Akira Kurosawa. (See also The Glass Key.)

Yojimbo itself has been remade several times, as:

A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a spaghetti western by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood.
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984), a fantasy B-movie starring David Carradine.
Last Man Standing (1996), a 1920s-era gangster film starring Bruce Willis.
Omega Doom (1996) by Albert Pyun, a post-apocalyptic science fiction B-movie starring Rutger Hauer.
Lucky Number Slevin (2006), also starring Willis and Josh Hartnett in a modern day retelling of Yojimbo.

The film Miller's Crossing (1990) by the Coen brothers contains stylistic and narrative elements of Hammett's The Glass Key, Red Harvest and several other Hammett works. The Coens' film Blood Simple (1984) takes its title from a line in Red Harvest where the Op tells Brand that 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."

Spoilers end here.