Red Harvest

Have had a copy of Red Harvest laying around since about 1992, thinking I would get to it someday, and now, almost done, I think it's safe to say that it is a cornerstone of American writing. I mean - 1929! It could have been written a week ago, the tersely unnamed hero is such an unrelenting badass. And barring some of the colorful obsolete lingo ("what's the rumpus?" - Hello, Coens!), of course.

Plot: San Fran detective is hired by Last Honest Man in a gang-divided Montana mining town to come sort some things out, client is DOA when said op arrives, so op decides to take matters in his own hands and SORT THE PLACE THE FUCK OUT.

Hammett's way-concise (yet still detailed enough to create a picture of the place) prose is a slap in the face to such contemporaries as Fitzgerald, who, while amazing, could never, ever be so lean, lean, lean.

Here:

"Red Harvest is the first modern novel." - me, thirty seconds ago. They can put that on the back of a reissue with the ubercool cover above.