Poisonville — Dashiell Hammett

Poisonville is the original set of four stories from 1927 and 1928 that were edited together to become the novel Red Harvest. The Continental Op is sent on assignment to a mining town in Montana to do some business. The man he was supposed to meet was murdered before he got to meet him.Personville, AKA Poisonville, was being run by four gangs that were brought in to quell a labor strike but then decided to stay and set up shop. The dead man was a reformist newspaper editor who seems to have got in the way of the gangs. Add to that a corrupt and compromised police department and Hammett has given us a recipe for murders, frameups, ambushes and a massive gang war.The Cleansing of Poisonville (1927)In recent years there have been too many examples where civic politics has degenerated into a business for profit. This story is the first, complete, episode in a series dealing with a city whose administrators have gone mad with power and lust of wealth. It is, also, to our minds, the ideal detective story—the new type of detective fiction which Black Mask is seeking to develop. You go along with the detective, meeting action with him, watching the development as the plot is unfolded, finding the clues as he finds them; and you have the feeling that you are living through the tense, exciting scenes rather than just reading a story. Poisonville is written by a master of his craft.A fourteen chapter novelette.Crime Wanted— Male or Female (1927)The grim adventures of the Continental detective in The Cleansing of Poisonville.An eleven chapter novelette.Dynamite (1928)The Cleansing of Poisonville.A nine chapter novelette.The 19th Murder (1928)The Continental detective cleans up.A twelve chapter novelette.