Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide

By Bright Summaries

Unlock the more straightforward side of Red Harvest with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, which follows a private detective known only as the Continental Operative, or the Op, as he travels to the town of Personville (known to its inhabitants as Poisonville) and witnesses the crime and corruption that are rife there. He soon gets caught up in the endemic violence, and as the body count rises we see the true extent of the greed and double-dealing that are tearing the town apart. Red Harvest is among Dashiell Hammett’s best-known works (he is also famously the author of The Maltese Falcon) and had a major influence on American gangster films and American crime fiction.

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This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:
• A complete plot summary
• Character studies
• Key themes and symbols
• Questions for further reflection

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• Language: English
• Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
• Release date: May 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9782808019347

Book preview

AMERICAN WRITER

Born in St Mary’s County, Maryland (United States) in 1894.

Died in Manhattan, New York City in 1961.

Notable works:

The Maltese Falcon (1930), novel

The Glass Key (1931), novel

The Thin Man (1934), novel

Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of crime stories and novels, and a pioneer of the ‘hard-boiled’ genre. Mostly set in America’s inner-city underworld, his stories were often morbidly violent, while his heroes were cynical and world-weary figures. The protagonist of Hammett’s third novel, P.I. Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1930), was played by Humphrey Bogart (American actor, 1899-1957) in the 1941 film adaptation, and the role helped to establish Bogart as Hollywood’s quintessential noir detective. Bogart would go on to play the famous P.I. Philip Marlowe in the 1946 film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s (American writer, 1888-1959) The Big Sleep (1939). Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hammett had first-hand experience of the gritty underworld his stories described. For seven years, Hammett worked as an operative for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Across the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pinkertons were employed as strike-breakers: they would spy on and infiltrate unions and attempt to bring them down from the inside. Hammett was left deeply jaded by this employment and over the rest of his life he moved further and further to the political left. Like so many of his peers, he became a victim of McCarthyism in the 1950s, when he was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was subsequently