SOURCE: Horsley, Lee. “Hard-Boiled Investigators.” In The Noir Thriller, pp. 23-44. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

In the following essay, Horsley provides an overview of hard-boiled crime-mystery-detective fiction as it developed through the short stories and serialized novels of pulp fiction magazines.

At the end of The Maltese Falcon (1930), Brigid O'Shaughnessy asks Sam Spade whether he would have treated her differently if he had received his share of the money from the sale of a genuine falcon. ‘“Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be,”’ Spade replies. ‘“That kind of reputation might be good business—bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy.”’ His answer suggests the ambivalent position of the archetypal hard-boiled investigator. Self-aware and self-mocking, he acknowledges that he is often seen as indistinguishable from the crooks with whom he has to deal. However, while he readily admits looking...