Novel Noir is a literary style distinguished by an
unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex. It was pioneered by
Carroll John Daly in
the mid-1920s, popularized by
Dashiell Hammett (The
Maltese Falcon) over
the course of the decade, and refined by
Raymond Chandler
(The
Long Goodbye)
beginning in the late 1930s.
The style of novel noir is closely related to popular
hardboiled fiction stories, often published in so-called pulp magazines -
most famously "Black Mask". Later, many of these novels were published by
houses specializing in paperback originals, also colloquially known as
"pulps." Consequently, "pulp fiction" is often used as a synonym for
hardboiled crime fiction. In the United States, the original hardboiled
style has been emulated by innumerable writers, notably including Chester
Himes, Mickey Spillane,
Ross Macdonald
(The
Drowning Pool), John
D. MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, and Walter
Mosley. |