Mystery Book Club

Do you love a good mystery?

Would you like to share your love of mysteries with others?

Join the Audelia Road Branch's Mystery Book Club which meets every 3rd Thursday of the month to discuss a predetermined book (occuring on June 12 due to the Juneteenth holiday.)

This month's book is Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

There are limited physical copies available through Dallas Public Library but a free ebook version is available from Standard Ebooks.


The Continental Op, the nameless hard-drinking and quick-shooting detective, arrives at Personville—called “Poisonville” by its inhabitants—in response to a call from the local newspaper publisher Donald Willsson. But just as the Op arrives, Willsson is murdered in cold blood. The Op begins investigating the murder, only to be ensnared in the deep web of power, corruption, and lies that undergirds the rough-and-tumble town.

Red Harvest was first published as a series of short stories in Black Mask magazine before Hammett rewrote them and linked them together to form this novelization. It’s therefore the first novel to feature the Continental Op, the larger-than-life character who would go on to become the prototype for every hard-boiled, emotionally-stunted, fedora-wearing detective cliché to grace media ever since.


The novel’s influence has been widely recognized, with Time magazine placing it in its list of 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005 and authors for a century to come riffing on the stereotype created by the Continental Op. --https://standardebooks.org .

See http://bookclubs.arlf.org for more information about the Book Clubs. Fill out this form to request to join or leave the mailing lists, or send an e-mail to bookclubs@arlf.org.

We hope you will join us!