But what distinguishes Harvest is that the hero partakes in the slaughter. In contrast to Raymond Chandler's works and others by Hammett such as The Maltese Falcon there is a lot of killing. The police aren't separate from this - they make up one of the violent and corrupt sides. In fact the town is riven in two, with rival forces fighting for control of the liquor trade and other underground activities. Personville is so awful it's known to those who live there as Poisonville and upon arrival our hero quickly finds out that there are no innocent characters here. First published in 1929 it is a classic of its genre, with the central anonymous detective playing fast and lose with his gun in the midst of a deeply divided, corrupt town called Personville. I was drawn to Dashiell Hammett's classic hard-boiled detective novel on learning that it had served as the inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo which in turn provided the inspiration for Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |