Characters: B-
Writing: B
Plot: B+
Pacing: A-
Poignancy: B-
The protagonist of Red Harvest is a man known only as the Continental Op, a jaded, semi-moral agent for a powerful detective agency in 1920's California. A ruthless voice of justice who seems to lack any ambitions or passions of his own, Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op would shape future detective characters, an early hardboiled noir anti-hero, just as Hammett's stylish narratives helped to glamorize the nation's prohibition-era problems of gang violence, crooked cops and bought-out politicians. The details of the Op aren't particularly important, his background left to speculation, and even his motivations often ambiguous. He's hired to solve a murder in the corrupt mining town of Personville, and when he realizes that no one crime could be solved without cleaning up the whole place, he sets out to shake down the town and set Personville's warring gangs against each other. Like most noir, the specifics of the plot are often confusing or hard to grasp, and it's generally not worth trying to parse out all the twists and turns. It's style that carries the book.
As a sort of proto-noir, Red Harvest is lean and streamlined despite the intricacies of its plot. Noir hadn't been around enough at the time for genre conventions to come into effect, so femme fatales in Red Harvest aren't quite what you'd expect, and the Continental Op doesn't spend much time in shadowy bars or dark alleys. Yet one can see how Hammett became a trendsetter in the genre — his writing style is perfectly suited to taut, no-nonsense crime drama, even if his plotting is a little loose and unnecessarily convoluted. Scene changes happen fast, like everything else — almost too fast, especially given the number of players involved. The Op makes wisecracks, sneers at danger; the dames are strong-willed and sassy. Everyone is corrupt and out to cause trouble, but there's little drama in it, since no-one's motivations are revealed until after the fact. Hammett's two main leads are reliably interesting characters, easy to follow and successful at carrying the narrative momentum. But there are dozens of bit players, most of whom aren't alive long enough to be notable. Some add nothing to the story at all. Halfway through the book, the Op calls his agency headquarters and asks for backup. He gets it, in the form of two other detectives sent to work on the same case — something that's certainly not common in noir, so often built around a lone-wolf anti-hero. But in the end these two other characters are no more than two new names to keep track of, and they vanish from the story off and on, adding nothing but a slight touch of realism and scale. Which is nice, but there's already a lot to keep track of in Red Harvest, and the Op's unrealistic detective abilities don't make things any easier. Solutions to crimes aren't solved so much as announced, and then quickly passed over. The murder that opens the novel could have easily sustained most of the plot, but it ends up as only a minor step along the way. The Op often just knows — who killed who, and why — but the reader hasn't a chance of keeping up with his revelations until he dishes them out. It's a little disorienting, and makes each new reveal seem weightless and insignificant. Still, there's no doubt that the book's pacing is exhilarating, and the action is always fun, the dialogue always snappy. Hammett was a genuinely skilled writer. The narrative shares the easy, pushy confidence of its protagonist, so you won't find a dull page here. I expected Red Harvest to serve mostly as an interesting glimpse into history, a genre retrospective, but its punch still feels fresh. There's no point in trying to keep up — this is a roller coaster ride, a fun one, but there's no chance of straying off the tracks or even guessing where they're headed.
No comments:
Post a Comment