Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett)

The most classic PI detective story ever written -- narrated by the nameless detective about his time in the corrupt Montana mining town, Personville...aka Poisonville. Author Dashiell Hammett had the benefit of working as private investigator for the Pinkertons from 1915-1922 and did a stint in Butte Montana -- and you can feel that special grit and texture of reality in Red Harvest, his first novel.

Excerpt from Chapter 1, Page 1

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

If you like audiobooks you're in luck because there's one narrated by this guy Richard Ferrone and it's a rare treat of a voice for the genre.