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Hardboiled Crime Novels
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 ... [...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 All ... [...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 Graft ... [...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 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 working as a screenwriter in 1923. '' Black Mask'' first published ''Fast One'' as five novelettes in 1932. It was then published in book form by Doubleday in 1933. ''The New York Times'' described it as “a ceaseless welter of bloodshed and frenzy, a su ... [...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 with h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott (born August 21, 1971) is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective. She is also an American screenwriter, writer and television producer, producer of television. Biography Abbott graduated from the University of Michigan. Growing up, Abbott was greatly intrigued by the 1930 and 1940s movies she saw at a movie theater in Grosse Pointe. She believes that watching these films as a child gave her her lifelong interest in crime fiction. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University, and has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and the New School University. In 2013-2014, she served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. In addition to literature, Abbott has written for major journals and newspapers, including the ''Los Ang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Shaw (editor)
Joseph T. "Cap" Shaw (1874–1952) was the editor of '' Black Mask'' magazine from 1926 to 1936. Life and career Before becoming ''Black Mask'' editor, Shaw had worked as a newspaper reporter and as a soldier in World War I, attaining the rank of captain (Shaw's friends gave him the nickname "Cap").''Danger is My Business: an illustrated history of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines'' by Lee Server. Chronicle Books, 1993, (pp. 68-70). Shaw was also a professional fencer, and even won an Olympic medal for fencing. ''Hired Pens : Professional Writers in America's Golden Age of print'' by Ronald Weber. Ohio University Press, 1997 (p. 98) Under his editorship, ''Black Mask'' published many works of crime fiction now recognised as classics of the genre, by authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner."Pulps" by Robert Sampson, in ''Encyclopedia Mysteriosa'', edited by William L. DeAndrea. Macmillan, 1994, (p.287-9) Chandler greatly admired Shaw's ability ... [...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 chest a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adventure (magazine)
''Adventure'' was an American pulp magazine that was first published in November 1910Robinson, Frank M. & Davidson, Lawrence ''Pulp Culture – The Art of Fiction Magazines''. Collectors Press Inc 2007 (p. 33-48). by the Ridgway company, an subsidiary of the Butterick Publishing Company. ''Adventure'' went on to become one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines."No. 1 Pulp" ''''. The magazine had 881 issues. Its first editor was Trumbull White, he was succeeded in 1912 by |
Gordon Young (writer)
Gordon Young (1886 – February 10, 1948) was an American writer of adventure and western stories. Life Young was born in Ray County, Missouri.P. R. Meldrum, "Young, Gordon (Ray)" in ''Twentieth Century Western Writers'', edited by Geoff Sadler. St. James Press, 1991, ,(pp. 743–44)Tom Krabacher, "Gordon Ray Young:Forgotten Adventurer", in ''Blood N' Thunder'' Magazine Summer 2010, (p.60-78). He worked as a cowboy and served in the United States Marine Corps in the Philippines, before moving to Los Angeles and taking a job at the ''Los Angeles Times'' in 1914. During his time in Los Angeles, Young befriended the writer Paul Jordan-Smith and the painter Edward Middleton Manigault. Young eventually became Literary Editor of the ''Los Angeles Times''; one of his correspondents was Sinclair Lewis. He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, February 10, 1948. Writing career Young's first published story was "The Lady's Picture", in ''The Cavalier'' magazine, in March 1913. Gordon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Sampson (writer)
Robert Sampson (March 4, 1925 – December 3, 2006) was a vice president at United Airlines. He was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at age 5, and used a wheelchair for most of his life. Sampson, a lawyer, was an advocate for disabled persons. He served the President's Commission on Employment of the Handicapped under five American presidents. His efforts helped lead to architectural improvements in access for the disabled, such as wheelchair ramps. Sampson partnered with Jerry Lewis to raise money for the treatment of muscular dystrophy. A Boeing 747-400 The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The "Advanced Series 300" was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, targeting ..., tail number N116UA, is named after him. References * * * 1925 births 2006 deaths 20th-century American lawyers Deaths from muscular dystrophy People from Evanst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
