Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First person, the Continental Op
Red Harvest is written from the first-person point of view of the anonymous Continental Op. We definitely found it a bit odd to be seeing everything from the Op's point-of-view without ever finding out his name.
What's the big secret, right?
Well, we've got a couple theories here on why Hammett chose to keep the Op's identity a secret, and feel free to come up with your own. One reason is that it emphasizes the fact that the Op works as part of a larger detective agency—the Pinkertons. The fact that the only name we know him by is also the title of his professional occupation also underlines how the Op is defined entirely by his job as a detective.
This brings us to reason number two. If the Op's identity is defined solely by his work as an investigator, do we know any other personal information about him? Not really, right? It's very strange to have a novel written in the first-person, and yet to know so little about the narrator's personal life.
That's because the Op keeps things very business-like. He rarely gives us access to his inner emotions, and when he does tell us what he's thinking, it's always in a matter-of-fact way that keeps us readers at arm's length. Sometimes it makes us what to shout at the Op that we won't bite.
But of course, part of the Op's detachment is what allows Hammett to create the cynical tone of the novel. The Op can't go all soft and mushy when he's dealing with gangsters and cops, so it makes sense that when he narrates, his tone would have to be distant, cold and standoffish.