Red Harvest
- 226
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
- Time's List of the 100 Best Novels
- 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction
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Our view
“Red Harvest” is hard-boiled crime at its leanest, narrated by Dashiell Hammett’s sharp, sardonic Continental Op. Gangs have taken over a Montana mining town after a labour dispute, and the Op’s investigation of its killings suggests that corruption can belong to a place rather than a person. Some readers single out its plain, fast-moving prose and the narrator’s dry wit. Admirers of Chandler will find a tougher, terser forerunner here.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Red Harvest is a 1929 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. The plot follows the Op's investigation of several murders in a Montana mining town, which had been taken over by gangs following a labor dispute. Some of the novel was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a 1920 labor dispute in the mining town of Butte, Montana.
Reading order · The Continental Op
Full order & progress →- Red HarvestThis book
7.67.6 / 10 - The Dain CurseThe Dain Curse–Not ranked yet
- Corkscrew and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Middle Years, Volume 3Corkscrew and Other Stories: Collected Case Files of the Continental Op: The Middle Years, Volume 3–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 86 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 37% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Crime & mystery average of 7.6. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 7 | 8% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 79 | 92% |
Frequently asked
How long is Red Harvest?
It has 226 pages — shorter than 93% of the ranked books in Crime & mystery.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Crime & mystery — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
