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Hard-boiled
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op. Genre pioneers The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined by James M. Cain and by Raymond Chandler beginning in the late 1930s. Its heyday was in 1930s–50s America. Pulp fiction From its earliest days, hardboiled fiction was p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, " Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in '' Black Mask,'' a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, '' The Big Sleep'', was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but ''Playback'' have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other ''Black ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade ('' The Maltese Falcon''), Nick and Nora Charles (''The Thin Man''), the Continental Op (''Red Harvest'' and '' The Dain Curse'') and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9. Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time". In his obituary in ''The New York Times'', he was described as "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." ''Time'' included Hammett's 1929 novel ''Red Harvest'' on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. In 1990, the Crime Writers' Association picked three of his five novels for their list of '' The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time''. Five years later, four out of five of his novels made ''The Top 100 Mystery Novels of A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crime Fiction
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunit), courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre. History The ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights'') contains the earliest known examples of crime fiction. One example of a story of this genre is the medieval Arabic tale of " The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Ellroy
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels '' The Black Dahlia'' (1987), '' The Big Nowhere'' (1988), '' L.A. Confidential'' (1990), '' White Jazz'' (1992), ''American Tabloid'' (1995), ''The Cold Six Thousand'' (2001), and ''Blood's a Rover'' (2009). Life Early life Lee Earle "James" Ellroy was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Geneva Odelia (née Hilliker), was a nurse. His father, Armand, was an accountant and a onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth. His parents divorced in 1954, after which Ellroy and his mother moved to El Monte, California. At the age of 7, Ellroy saw his mother naked and began to sexually fantasize about her. He struggled in youth with this obsession, as he held a psycho-sexual relationship ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Hammer (character)
Michael Hammer is a fictional character created by the American author Mickey Spillane. Hammer debuted in the 1947 book '' I, the Jury''. Hammer is a no-holds-barred private investigator who carries a Colt .45 M1911A1 in a shoulder holster under his left arm. His love for his secretary Velda is outweighed only by his willingness to kill a killer. Hammer's best friend is Pat Chambers, Captain of Homicide NYPD. Hammer was a World War II army veteran who spent two years fighting jungle warfare in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II against Japan. Creation In 1946, Spillane, an established comic-book writer, worked with illustrator Mike Roy and Edwin Robbins to create the private-eye character Mike Danger for proposed comic-book or comic-strip publication. Unable to sell the project as a comic, he reworked the story as the novel '' I, the Jury'', converting Mike Danger to Mike Hammer and supporting character Holly to Velda. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chester Himes
Chester Bomar Himes (July 29, 1909 – November 12, 1984) was an American writer. His works, some of which have been filmed, include '' If He Hollers Let Him Go'', published in 1945, and the Harlem Detective series of novels for which he is best known, set in the 1950s and early 1960s and featuring two black policemen called Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. In 1958 Himes won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. Life Early life Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, on July 29, 1909, to Joseph Sandy Himes and Estelle Bomar Himes; his father was a professor of industrial trades at a black college, and his mother, prior to getting married, was a teacher at Scotia Seminary. Chester Himes grew up in a middle-class home in Missouri. When he was about 12 years old, his father took a teaching job in the Arkansas Delta at Branch Normal College (now University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff), and soon a tragedy took place that would profoundly shape Himes' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lew Archer
Lew Archer is a fictional character created by American-Canadian writer Ross Macdonald. Archer is a private detective working in Southern California. Between the late 1940s and the early '70s, the character appeared in 18 novels and a handful of shorter works as well as several film and television adaptations. Macdonald's Archer novels have been praised for building on the foundations of hardboiled fiction by introducing more literary themes and psychological depth to the genre. Critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist" while author Eudora Welty was a fan of the series and carried on a lengthy correspondence with Macdonald. The editors of ''Thrilling Detective'' wrote: "The greatest P.I. series ever written? Probably." Profile Initially, Lew Archer was similar to (if not completely a derivative of) Philip Marlowe, the pioneering sleuth created by Raymond Chandler in the 1930s. However, Macdonald ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sue Grafton
Sue Taylor Grafton (April 24, 1940 – December 28, 2017) was an American author of detective novels. She is best known as the author of the "alphabet series" ('' "A" Is for Alibi'', etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California. The daughter of detective novelist C. W. Grafton, she said the strongest influence on her crime novels was author Ross Macdonald. Before her success with this series, she wrote screenplays for television movies. Early life Sue Grafton was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to C. W. Grafton (1909–1982) and Vivian Harnsberger, both of whom were the children of Presbyterian missionaries. Her father was a municipal bond lawyer who also wrote mystery novels and her mother was a former high school chemistry teacher. Her father enlisted in the Army during World War II when she was three and returned when she was five, after which her home life started falling apart. Both parents became alcoholics and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Cain (author)
George Carroll Sims (May 30, 1902 – June 23, 1966), better known by his pen names Paul Cain and Peter Ruric, was an American pulp fiction author and screenwriter. He is best known for his novel ''Fast One'', which is considered to be a landmark of the pulp fiction genre and was called the "high point in the ultra hard-boiled manner" by Raymond Chandler.''Danger Is My Business: An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines'', by Lee Server (Chronicle Books, 1993) (p.70). Sims enjoyed a brief career in Hollywood as a screenwriter during the 1930s, including writing the screenplay ''ScreenPlay'' is a television drama anthology series broadcast on BBC2 between 9 July 1986 and 27 October 1993. Background After single-play anthology series went off the air, the BBC introduced several showcases for made-for-television, fe ... for the Boris Karloff vehicle ''The Black Cat''. He died in North Hollywood in 1966. Career Sims moved to Los Angeles in 1918 and began wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Mask (magazine)
''Black Mask'' was a pulp magazine first published in April 1920 by the journalist H. L. Mencken and the drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine was one of several money-making publishing ventures to support the prestigious literary magazine '' The Smart Set'', which Mencken edited, and which had operated at a loss since at least 1917. Under their editorial hand, the magazine was not exclusively a publisher of crime fiction, offering, according to the magazine, "the best stories available of adventure, the best mystery and detective stories, the best romances, the best love stories, and the best stories of the occult." The magazine's first editor was Florence Osborne (credited as F. M. Osborne). Editorial control After eight issues, Mencken and Nathan considered their initial $600 investment to have been sufficiently profitable, and they sold the magazine to its publishers, Eltinge Warner and Eugene Crow, for $12,500. The magazine was then edited by George W. Sutton (1922 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Crime Fiction
Crime is a typically 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century genre, dominated by British and American writers. This article explores its historical development as a genre. Crime fiction in history Crime Fiction came to be recognised as a distinct literary genre, with specialist writers and a devoted readership, in the 19th century. Earlier novels and stories were typically devoid of systematic attempts at detection: There was a detective, whether amateur or professional, trying to figure out how and by whom a particular crime was committed; there were no police trying to solve a case; neither was there any discussion of motives, alibis, the ''modus operandi'', or any of the other elements which make up the modern crime writing. Early Arabic crime stories An early example of an Arabic-language crime story is "The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade in the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights''). In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy, locked che ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Continental Op
The Continental Op is a fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett. He is a private investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office. The stories are all told in the first person and his name is never given. Profile The Continental Op is a master of deceit in the exercise of his occupation. In his 1927 '' Black Mask'' story "$106,000 Blood Money" the Op is confronted with two dilemmas: should he expose a corrupt fellow detective, thereby hurting the reputation of his agency; and should he also allow an informant to collect the $106,000 reward in a big case even though he is morally certain—but cannot prove—that the informant has murdered one of his agency's clients? The Op resolves his two problems neatly by manipulating events so that the corrupt detective and the informant get into an armed confrontation in which both are killed. Decades of witnessing human cruelty, misery, and ruin, as well as being instrumental in sen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
