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language: English
country: USA
year: 1929
form: novel
genre(s): mystery
dates read: 15.1.24-19.1.24
decided on a whim to listen to The Dain Curse, by Dashiell Hammett, the sequel to Red Harvest, which I listened to and really enjoyed last year. I loved it.
it is, as I am coming to expect from noir, labyrinthine: a twisting and turning series of murders, attempted murders, kidnappings, a bombing, an esoteric Templar-revival cult, and an apparent family curse all swirl around an unfortunate young woman named Gabrielle Legatt (later Collinson), struggling with the legacy of an abusive stepmother and an addiction to morphine. the Continental Op is grudgingly but — busybody that he is — inevitably drawn closer and closer to Gabrielle as he tries to unravel the true nature of the curse. there’s a dubious trashy supernatural fiction writer who ambiguously flirts with the Op, there’s — again — an esoteric Templar-revival cult, there’s an extended detox sequence, there are like ten layers of false confessions and by the end of it the Op still leaves it as an open question whether he’s got the full truth, even if he’s “solved” the case by identifying the central cause.
it is, among other things, that kind of thing that makes you see why so many 20th-century Marxist-aligned literary critics loved detective fiction: there’s a lot to like from an ideological perspective as the Op applies his singleminded commitment to solution to, in this case, not the corruption and injustice plaguing Poisonville but the mystification of real causes. the best scene is unquestionably the Op’s systematic deconstruction for Gabrielle of the concept of the family curse and, unexpectedly, the concept of inherited “degeneracy” (which Gabrielle claims to see in herself both physically and mentally). who you are, the Op insists, is up to you and the choices you make, even if you can’t always control the circumstances you find yourself in. honestly exhilarating!
it is, of course, still a product of its time: the only non-white characters are a Black maid (and her petty thief boyfriend) and a Mexican cook, both of whom are of course devoted to Gabrielle, their employer (even if the manner of their devotion puts them at times on the opposite of things from the Op). but I was surprised by how even-handedly the book presents them, accounting for the period racial politics — while the Op may internally regard them as less-than, he also takes them seriously and treats them more or less respectfully. it’s a very low bar, and I was pleasantly surprised that it managed to clear it.
the Op’s great virtue is that he both takes everything and everyone absolutely seriously and, simultaneously, rarely shows anyone how seriously he’s taking things. the mix of serious and sardonic produces a narration that’s extremely engaging, and the book manages information just as effectively as Red Harvest, with a similar set of techniques: the Op relies on a combination of educated guesses (which he admits, to the reader if not to his interlocutor, are guesses), wild guesses (some of which are, again, completely wrong), and bluffing, and so the reader (or, at least, I) can be carried along without ever feeling like the Op knows dramatically more than they do (even if he’s better at putting pieces together than I am) or that they’ve already worked out a mystery that the Op is still catching up to.
it’s a shame there aren’t more Continental Op novels, because I’d absolutely read more of them.
moods: dark, lighthearted, mysterious