: Actually, I think those alone *are* what makes a book
hardboiled. A
: hardboiled suspense novel is a suspense novel with a tough,
colloquial
: attitude.
I disagreee. There's more to hardboiled than an easy, tough
attitude, but
I can't think of any rules right now. The earlier points made
about
systemic corruption are important, although any list of
requirements would
have to be allowed to fit loosely.
Someone recommended a Nelson DeMille book, _Plum Island_, to
me a few
months ago. The hero was a tough slang-using, beer-drinking,
woman-chasing
cop who was taking some time off work because of an injury.
He got mixed
up in some biological warfare shenanigans, or something. I'll
never know
because I couldn't get past page 50. It was awful. One of the
things
that annoyed me was that DeMille was using all the surface
aspects of a
hardboiled character without really understanding what it was
really all
about. The rest of the book was just a standard, modern,
bad,
cut-and-paste thriller.
How would you define a noir novel, as opposed to a hardboiled
one? How do
things like _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ and _I Was Dora Suarez_
fit your
definition?
Some other folks on the list must have thoughts about
definitions. We've
been talking about them for two years, and it can't be as
simple as "tough
and colloquial."
Bill
-- William Denton <URL:http://www.vex.net/~buff/> Toronto, Ontario, Canada Caveat lector.
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