Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

If you are going to read crime fiction at all, read the best--and this is the best (although Raymond Chandler fans might disagree). Hammett invented the "hard-boiled" detective, writing with a gritty style, witty and fast-paced dialogue, and picture-perfect character descriptions. His hero has a strong sense of right and wrong, but does not back away from letting the ends justify the means in cleaning things up.

In this novel, the Continental Detective Agency operative (never named) is brought into town by the newspaper's publisher, who turns out to be dead by the time the operative arrives. Soon finding out that the town is "owned" by the dead man's father, the operative finagles a contract from the father to clean up the town, which has been taken over by four gang factions (and a crooked police force), who had originally been brought to town by the same father to break a labor strike. The plot from here on is very complicated, with the operative cleverly pitting gang against gang, leading them to all-out warfare. In the process, the body count mounts, but the operative escapes harm, through cunning and just blind luck.

All this "red harvest" is almost too much for even the jaded operative, who says he is finding joy in the killing and is going "blood-simple." I think, although I don't know for sure, that the Coen Brothers must have taken the title of one of their movies from this book. It fits.

To compare books to food, this would not be gourmet cuisine, but it would be one of the best hamburgers you ever had. It seems absolutely authentic; I would be willing to bet that mobsters are just as sordid and amoral today as they were in 1929. And the people who deal with them still run the risk of going "blood-simple."

I don't think this is even Hammett's best book; check him out.