A Little Slice of Hardboiled Heaven Freelance writer, web designer and film buff Brad Lang is a sometime-contributor to this site, the author of the Crockett private eye series and the man behind both Hardboiled Heaven and Classic Movies.org. Back when this site was in its infancy, he generously offered us this list of his … Continue reading Brad Lang’s Ten Favourite Detective, Hard-boiled & Noir Films
Tag: Hard-boiled
The Hardboiled Era (1929-58)
A Checklist from Geoffrey O'Brien's Hardboiled America [This is the appendix to Hardboiled America, by Geoffrey O'Brien (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1981). It's a very good book on the topic, although much information on writers is now available that wasn't when it was written.] The following list is designed to show the hardboiled novel not … Continue reading The Hardboiled Era (1929-58)
The Rara-Avis Top 100 Hard-Boiled Characters of the Twentieth Century (2002)
As Chosen by the Members of Rara-Avis Compliled by Joe Dante and Mark Blumenthal In March and April of 2002, the members of Rara-Avis, the web's premier disscussion group for all things hard-boiled, decided to poll its members on the The Top 100 Hard-Boiled Characters of the Twentieth Century. Readers were invited to submit their … Continue reading The Rara-Avis Top 100 Hard-Boiled Characters of the Twentieth Century (2002)
“Tough Dick” Donahue
Created by Frederick Nebel (1903-67) One of the hardest of the hard-boiled dicks was prolific pulpster Frederick Nebel's private eye "TOUGH DICK" DONAHUE, whom Cap Shaw of Black Mask hoped would replace The Continental Op after Dashiell Hammett stopped writing for that magazine. There was certainly some reasons for their optimism. A big, burly Irishman and … Continue reading “Tough Dick” Donahue
Joe Kurtz
Created by Dan Simmons "On the day he was shot in the head, things were going strangely well for Joe Kurtz." -- Hard as Nails Got hard? Buffalo, New York ex-con private eye JOE KURTZ is the protagonist of a trilogy of acid-etched noirish thrillers by writer Dan Simmons that, despite their bleak worldview, never … Continue reading Joe Kurtz
Murder in the Library: The Best Anthologies of Hard-Boiled, Noir & Pulp Reprints
Until the eighties, I don't think anyone had ever thought of doing a collection of original private eye stories. Oh, there'd certainly been some amazing volumes of reprinted tales, full of hard-boiled cops and cabbies and reporters and other dicks and janes who made trouble their business. It took Robert Randisi and the crew at … Continue reading Murder in the Library: The Best Anthologies of Hard-Boiled, Noir & Pulp Reprints
What the hell do you mean by “Hard-boiled,” for that matter?
"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing." -- The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway, Sadly, most of the original content for this page went missing during the Great Spilled Coffee Incident of 2008. It featured, of course, some of the pithiest … Continue reading What the hell do you mean by “Hard-boiled,” for that matter?