Friday, July 29, 2005
Red Harvest
For whatever reason I love this hard boiled, gin/whisky & laudanum soaked, blood simple murder mystery enough to name it among my favorites.
It is about an investigator known only by the moniker the continental op who is trying to clean up the corruption in a town named Personville (aka Poisonville) by it’s denizens. It is full of great lines like:
“Don Willsson’s gone to sit on the right hand of God, if God don’t mind looking at bullet holes.’ ‘Who shot him?’ I asked. The gray man scratched the back of his neck and said: ‘Somebody with a gun”. And others: “Are you married?’ ‘Don’t start that.’ ‘Then you are?’ ‘No’ “I’ll bet your wife’s glad of it.”
I don’t really like murder mysteries, normally, but this one built so many of the clichés and uses them so well making them fun--in a kind of twisted late 1920’s gangland kind of way. It is comfort food--a blue plate special for my soul.
It is about an investigator known only by the moniker the continental op who is trying to clean up the corruption in a town named Personville (aka Poisonville) by it’s denizens. It is full of great lines like:
“Don Willsson’s gone to sit on the right hand of God, if God don’t mind looking at bullet holes.’ ‘Who shot him?’ I asked. The gray man scratched the back of his neck and said: ‘Somebody with a gun”. And others: “Are you married?’ ‘Don’t start that.’ ‘Then you are?’ ‘No’ “I’ll bet your wife’s glad of it.”
I don’t really like murder mysteries, normally, but this one built so many of the clichés and uses them so well making them fun--in a kind of twisted late 1920’s gangland kind of way. It is comfort food--a blue plate special for my soul.
# posted by Tom Smith @ 8:43 AM 
