Character Analysis
Pete the Finn
Pete's a bootlegger and one of the four main gangsters competing for control over Personville. We're given very little information about Pete. All we know is that Elihu had hired him along with other gangsters to help end the labor dispute. Pete is later shot down by Reno Starkey.
Lew Yard
Lew Yard owns a loan shop business that handles stolen goods. He and Noonan are friends, which proves pretty convenient. Why? Because it means that Lew and his men rarely get into trouble with the law—Noonan's there to bail them out. It proves less convenient though when one of Yard's men, Reno Starkey, plots to overtake Yard's position by teaming up with Noonan. Yard tries to send Reno a message to knock it off with the funny business, but Reno responds by killing him.
Reno Starkey
Reno Starkey is part of Lew Yard's crew, but he teams up with Noonan in an attempt to take over Yard's racket. On Noonan's orders, Reno robs a bank along with some of Lew's crew and a man named Jerry, who is one of Whisper's men. During the robbery, Jerry is killed on purpose to make it look as if the robbery had been organized by Whisper. But in reality Whisper was nowhere near the robbery. Noonan just wants to pin the crime on Whisper.
Reno is "caught" by the police, but released from jail several hours later with Noonan's help. Reno is introduced so late in the novel that it seems as if Hammett wanted to bring in someone to kill off more characters without tying up any of the main figures. So as soon as Reno enters the scene, Pete and then Yard are killed. And twenty pages later, Dinah also shows up murdered. In the final chapter of the novel, Reno is fatally wounded after he kills Whisper.