What is Hard Boiled Detective Fiction?

1. What is Hard Boiled Detective Fiction?

2. Time Period: 1920s-1950s • 1. Context: why this time? It began to develop as a popular form in the aftermath of one devastating war and came to maturity in the two decades that terminate in a second world war. In its most characteristic narratives, some traumatic event irretrievably alters the conditions of life and creates for its characters an absolute experiential divide between their dependence on stable, predictable patterns and the recognition that life is, in truth, morally chaotic, subject to randomness and total dislocation

3. Why is it called that? • Named for the process of hardening of an egg; to be hardboiled is to be comparatively tough. • They not only solve mysteries but confront violence on a regular basisTHUS leading to their burnout and the cynical (so-called "tough") attitude towards their own emotions. • They are generally a tough, independent, often solitary figure, a descendant of the frontier hero and cowboy but, as re-imagined as a cynical city-dweller

4. Points to note about the PI • P.I.s need to be tough, since they are dealing with killers, so they act tough and talk that way, too. • They are loners, much like the old gunslingers of the West. • They have a code of honour and justice that may not be strictly legal, but it is moral. • They may be threatened, or beaten, but they won’t give up a case or betray a client. • They are individuals, often matched against a corrupt political or criminal organization, but they prevail because they are true to themselves and their code. • They are smart-alecks and talk that way.

5. What happens? It’s always the same… • The basic narrative pattern pits this lone investigator against brutal criminals, often in league with a corrupt power structure.

6. Key Conventions • The unsettling manipulation of point of view and the unstable position of the protagonist • We are often brought close to the mind of a protagonist whose position on other characters is not fixed; we see treacherous confusions of his role and the movement of the protagonist from one role to another. • EG: The victim might become the aggressor; the hunter might turn into the hunted or vice versa; the investigator might double as either the victim or the perpetrator. • An exploration of guilt is fundamental, and there can be no clear distinction between guilt and innocence.

7. Some things to note: • Generally told in the first person form • Someone (frequently a young woman) comes to the office because she’s in trouble. The police can’t or won’t help, or the situation is so sensitive that an investigation needs to be kept secret. • The detective takes the case, which is invariably about something more than he was told. He interviews people and learns secrets, frequently about events in the distant past. • He is usually betrayed by one or more people, often his client, which, being a cynic, doesn’t surprise him. • By the time he concludes his investigation, there generally have been several more murders along the way as people attempt to keep secrets hidden. • He turns over the culprit to the police, and continues with his lonely life, awaiting the next meager payday.

8. And who could forget: • At the heart of the novels is a leggy blond A quote from a Raymond Chandler novel: Ilit another cigarette and looked at the dental-supply company’s bill again. The minutes went by with their fingers to their lips. Then there was a small knocking on wood. It was a blond. A blond to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looked by moonlight. She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. “Cops are just people,” she said irrelevantly. The two salient characteristics of Crime fiction are the tall leggy blond and dismissive attitude to conventional policing

9. Let’s have a look… Double Indemnity • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKrrAa2o9Eg The Maltese Falcon • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phUxnXGhEiI