Red Harvest

His name remains one of the most important and recognisable in the crime fiction genre. Hammett set the standard for much of the work that would follow * INDEPENDENT *He is master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer * BOSTON GLOBE *Hammett’s prose is clean and entirely unique. His characters are as sharp and economically defined as any in American literature * NEW YORK TIMES *One of the foremost practitioners of the hard-boiled detective story * SCOTSMAN *He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used – Raymond ChandlerThe first fully “hard-boiled” hero in American letters * NEW YORKER *The dean of the school of hard-boiled fiction * NEW YORK TIMES *…a literary classic dealing with corruption by one of the masters of crime fiction * CATHOLIC HERALD *

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was born in Maryland and worked in a number of menial jobs until he became an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His experiences as a private detective laid the foundations for his writing career. His work includes RED HARVEST, THE MALTESE FALCON, THE GLASS KEY, The Thin Man and some eighty short stories, mostly published in Black Mask magazine.