Red Harvest; in Black Mask
New York: Black Mask, 1927-28. First Edition. Wrappers. 4 vols. 1st appearance anywhere of his first novel, serialized in 4 issues of Black Mask magazine, Nov. and Dec. 1927, Jan. and Feb. 1928. Original wrappers, pulp paper a light tan, spine ends chipped on Nov. and Feb., spine mostly chipped away on Dec., a few specks of undetectable strengthening, 1 small chip from a spine reattached, overlapping edges with little tears and chips, creases (some of them long), short tears, but let’s get real here: Each issue is complete, integral, and otherwise very good, and neither defective or imperfect, none of the flaws are crippling, and it’s certainly superior to most of the very few sets that are known. No complete set has sold at auction in the last 40 years (3 of the 4 issues were sold 20 years ago). Fragile paper ephemera, rarer than a desert duck. Old half morocco case. good. Item #510
Some books are wise, and some are otherwise. Red Harvest starts as a mystery then becomes a psychological thriller and finally, it’s the icon that originated the hardboiled detective novel, a new world writing invention of phenomenal influence with hundreds of its descendants amplifying the genre to this day, but paradigms don’t just fall from the sky. They evolve in a progression, this one from Bentley’s naturalist mystery, Trent’s Last Case (1913), Black Mask magazine (starting in 1919), the pithy prose of Ernest Hemingway (from 1923) and Hammett’s own hardboiled short stories (the first one Arson Plus, also in 1923). And sequence often flows from necessity, so Hammett worked for The Pinkerton Detective Agency where he pondered his experiences before applying his journalist style in stories, and ultimately writing this novel. In the exemplary instance, the chicken came first because God’s too busy to sit on an egg. By 1927 Hammett had mastered the terse, tight, vernacular prose of his emotionless realism, and used it to set his unprecedented scenes, depict his indelibly believable characters, and put on their lips, a sharp, raw, arresting dialogue that punctuated the grounded plotlines of his short stories. By then he was confident enough, experienced enough, and proud enough, to warily try writing a novel and this first appearance of it is seldom seen. And since Hammett’s serialized parts issues are generally rarer than his book editions, waiting for another set like this one will get boring before it gets satisfying, and finding something else by Hammett, that’s equally as cool, may well be a much steeper financial climb, and if you target one of his first 3 novels in a dead on fine dustjacket, it will probably cost 4 or 5 times the price we’ve put on this set, for which, the only compensation will prove to be, that you’re going to have plenty of time to save up the money, because you won’t get a buying opportunity very often.
Price:
$20,000.00