SOURCE: Grimes, Larry E. “Stepsons of Sam: Re-Visions of the Hard-Boiled Detective Formula in Recent American Fiction.” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 29, no. 3 (autumn 1983): 535-44.

In the following essay, Grimes explores three modern novels as “revisions” of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled detective formula that increasingly focus on the role of the imagination in detection.

During the past decade, a small industry has developed, using American hard-boiled detective stories as its primary raw material. Both films and fiction have been made from this well-established formula. A partial list includes such successful films as Chinatown, The Late Show, Foul Play, Play It Again, Sam, and Murder by Death. Joe Gores' Hammett, Roger Simon's Moses Wine books, the le Vine novels of Andrew Bergman, and Andrew Fenady's The Man with Bogart's Face are representative of the wide range of popular detective novels (serious, upbeat, comic, nostalgic) derived from the formula.¹ Indeed, interest in...