Crime Fiction Genres

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.