Red Harvest belongs to Dashiell Hammett's Black Mask period, his first creative period, when most of the stories and novels he published appeared in this pulp magazine. The figure of the unnamed Continental Op is central to this early period, which begins with the publication of "Arson Plus" in October 1923 and ends with "The Farewell Murder" (1930). All of the stories and the two Op novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, are connected by the figure of the detective and by the uniformly negative view of American society. Contrary to some critics' opinions, the character of the Op remains fairly constant throughout the series, without much shift in either his violent methods or his moral stance. Several commentators have pointed out the excess of violence in the Op stories, yet this flood of violence is not used to titillate the reader but rather to persuade him...