Red Harvest

<p><em>Red Harvest</em> by Dashiell Hammett is a gritty hard-boiled detective novel featuring the unnamed Continental Op a private investigator sent to the corrupt town of Personville (nicknamed Poisonville).</p><p>The Op arrives to help a newspaper editor clean up the town but soon finds the editor murdered. Determined to uncover the truth he sets off a brutal gang war among rival criminal factions manipulating them against each other in an effort to purge the city of corruption. The novel is fast-paced violent and morally ambiguous portraying a bleak view of human nature and institutional decay.</p><p>It's considered a classic of noir fiction and a major influence on later crime literature and film.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p>