The Red Harvest

Red Harvest es una novela de Dashiell Hammett, de 1920. Se sigue la investigación de varios asesinatos en medio de una disputa laboral en un corrupto pueblo minero en Montana.

Más abajo el argumento de la obra en inglés. Buscamos el término moll, donde resaltan los nombres de algunas famosas criminales del siglo 20.

 

“La imagen fumando un puro con un arma en sus manos le ganó la fama de novia de un gánster y violenta…”

 

Plot

The Continental Op is called to Personville by the newspaper publisher Donald Willsson, who is murdered before the Op has a chance to meet with him. The Op begins to investigate Donald's murder and meets with Donald's father, Elihu Willsson, a local industrialist who has found his control of the city threatened by several competing gangs. Elihu had originally invited those gangs into Personville to help him impose and then enforce the end of a labor dispute.

The Op extracts a promise and a signed letter from Elihu that pays the Continental Detective Agency, the Op's employer, $10,000 in exchange for cleaning up the city and ridding it of the gangs. When the Op solves Donald's murder, Elihu tries to break his promise on the deal, but the Op will not allow him to do so.

In the meantime, the Op is spending time with Dinah Brand, a possible love interest of the late Donald Willsson as well as a moll for Max "Whisper" Thaler, a local gangster. Using information from Brand and Personville's dishonest chief of police, Noonan, the Op manages to extract and spread incriminating information to all of the warring parties. When the Op reveals that a bank robbery was staged by the cops and one of the mobs to discredit another mob, a gang war erupts.

But the Op wakes up the next morning to find Brand stabbed to death with the ice pick the Op handled the previous evening. There are no visible signs of forced entry. The Op becomes a suspect sought by the police for Brand's murder, and one of his fellow operatives, Dick Foley, leaves Personville because he is uncertain of the Op's innocence.

The Op, now wanted by the police, tempts Reno Starkey, a gang lieutenant, to take on the last strong rival mob, led by Pete the Finn. The last gangs are eliminated by pipe bombs, arson, gun fights, and corrupt cops gunning down the survivors.

The Op tracks down Starkey, the only gang leader still alive. Starkey is bleeding from four gunshot wounds, having just killed mobster Whisper Thaler. Starkey reveals that he was the one who stabbed Brand, and that she had collided with the semi-conscious Op so he looked like the culprit.

The corrupt police chief Noonan and the gang leaders are all dead. The Op blackmails Elihu Willsson into calling the governor, who sends in the National Guard, declares martial law, and suspends the entire police force. Elihu Willsson gets back his town, as promised—although not in the way that he had anticipated. The Op returns to San Francisco, where the Old Man (the chief of the Continental Detective Agency's office) gives him "merry hell" for his activities. (The Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett.)

 

Vocabulario

Moll: (gun moll or gangster moll or gangster's moll) compañera de un criminal.

 

Gun molls conocidas

Mae Capone – Al Capone

Dee David – Asociada con Frank Niccoli (1910–1949), Mickey Cohen y Fred Sica (1915–1987). Dee David fue aspirante a actriz

Jean Delaney (Crompton) – Tommy Carroll

Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti – John Gotti

Judith Exner – norteamericana que dijo ser la amante del presidente John F. Kennedy y de los líderes de la mafia Sam Giancana and John Roselli

Evelyn "Billie" Frechette – John Dillinger

Buda Godman – John Homer T. Frances, miembros de la Lou Blonger Gang de Denver.

Catherine Greig – James Whitey Bulger

Karen Hill – Henry Hill

Virginia Hill – Bugsy Siegel

Mary Kinder – Harry Pierpont

Opal "Mack Truck" Long – Russell Clark

Edna Murray – esposa de "Diamond Joe" Sullivan, que luego sería ejecutado por asesinato en 924. Luego se casaría con Jack Murray, que fue preso 25 años. Luego viviría con Volney Davis, hasta que fueron arrestados por secuestro en 1935.

Mary O'Dare – Raymond Hamilton

Bonnie Parker – Clyde Barrow

Geraldine "Geri" McGee Rosenthal – Frank Rosenthal

Kathryn Thorne – George "Machine Gun" Kelly

Helen Gillis – George "Baby Face" Nelson

Kiki Roberts - Legs Diamond

Bonnie Parker, 1933

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