Red Harvest

By: Dashiell Hammett

Narrated by: Richard Ferrone

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. From the author of The Maltese Falcon.

©1929, 1956 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, Dashiell Hammett. All rights reserved. (P)2011 AudioGO

Critic reviews

"Dashiell Hammett is an original. He is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." ( Boston Globe)

Just didn’t like it

I have never read a Dashiell Hammett book and I wanted to experience his writing style.

Personally I found there were too many characters to keep track of who was who. The plot was convoluted and hard to believe

But mostly I think the problem was the performance. All the characters sounded the same, whether male or female it was difficult to distinguish which character was speaking. This is probably the number one reason I didn’t like this book.

Lots of violence

What a great tale. The language is so 20’s & 30’s and so gangster. My third Dashiell Hammett book and my favorite! Lots of violence. About 20 people killed!

Better than The Maltese Falcon IMHO

I may be in the minority here, but I liked it better than The Maltese Falcon. The continental op is a great character and the story can best be described as 'gritty'

Also the narrator is perfect for the story

A hardboiled detective novel

One of the original novels of the genre, there are several plot twists that keep you guessing until the very end.

low key delivery enhanced the action

This almost comically complex genre classic is greatly enhanced by the matter-of-fact narration tone

The Op takes the case.

Where does Red Harvest rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Red Harvest is a the one of the best action audiobooks I Listened to so far

Who was your favorite character and why?

The Op is my second most favorite detective Hammett ever wrote. Right after Sam Spade.

Have you listened to any of Richard Ferrone’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I listened him do Hammett other Op story, The Dain Curse. His performance in this audio was better.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes this was one those books.

Any additional comments?

Hammett writes the best stories. They also make great audiobooks.

Deception and greed

To keep his company town his own, the owner of the company town, Wilson, brings in thugs to break A strike at a mining company in the 1920s.
It takes eight months to break up the strike but then the true cost begins to become apparent.Those who help break up the strike have no plans to go away from the city that they feel that they now own and control. Battles ensue between the owner of the mining Company and the thugs.

The owner of the mining company brings a man from a company in San Francisco to clean up the town. That man, Dashiell Hammett, is given carte blanche ample funds to use whatever methods he would like to use to restore the town to civility and expunge the thugs.

One thug is a bootlegger, another is a gambler, another is a woman who brokers information, another is the police chief and there more including Wilson who hires Hammett. Also Wilson had a son who came back home to help clean up the town, not knowing that his father was involved in part of its corruption.

The book is a delightful Read. Hammett is only one man. He has to think carefully how he is going to use his Brains, occasionally his Brawn and, and pistol to stay alive, Get control of the town,and decrease the number of thugs in town.

He does this with tact, careful talk, knowing how to be in the right place at the right time, working hard, and realizing how he can take it vantage of one groups anger or misunderstanding and have the various bags fight it out among themselves until he’s the last man standing.

Although the plot may be good, what we enjoy is Hammet and how he does his job.

The language of the time (1920s)has many colloquialisms that we learn through context but these add tremendously to the distraction created by the work. There is much hidden humor and double entendre.

This book is a distraction. In my opinion that’s often what a book should do, distract us from reality for a while and this book draws us in with its well described characters, it’s mini subplots, Practical Criminal philosophy,partial understandings and out right deceit as well as the cleverness used by our hero, Dashiell Hammett, to achieve his objectives.

Pile 'em high!

Listening to this I tried to figure who left more dead bodies in his wake: Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns, Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus, or Hammett in Red Harvest. Hobson's choice. After a while I lost track of the characters. They came, they bled, they dropped and they were forgotten. Repeat. And repeat. Competently recited by Richard Ferrone.

Hammett is still one of the best

One of the best crime novels ever written, by one of the greatest crime novelists of all time. Hammett at his peak is tough to beat. As fresh today as it was 92 years ago, it could as well have been written last month as 1929.

Topping it off is outstanding narration by Richard Ferrone, well-known for his work on the Lucas Davenport series by John Sandford, another of my favorites. I enjoyed every second of this production, and hated to see it end.

The Very First Hard-boiled Mystery Isn't The Best

We all have to start somewhere and the author of "The Maltese Falcon " started here. The beginning of the story is all over the place and doesn't come together until the very end.

It's not the best private eye mystery but it was the springboard that gave us Sam Spade, Philip Marlow, and Mike Hammer. So, I can't complain too much about it.