John Wooley edited the selection of Robert Leslie Bellem's
stories that I mentioned here a while back. Here's Wooley's
take on the term "hard-boiled."
Bill Crider
"Dan Turner's
tales are shining examples of the kind of fiction
called
'hard-boiled.' The term has been bandied about a lot in
recent years, but basically it refers to that style nurtured
by Captain Joseph T. Shaw in his Black Mask detective pulp,
popularized by such fine detective writers as Dashiell
Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and continues to the present
day in the works of scribes like Mickey Spillane, Ross
Macdonald and Joe Gores. Hard-boiled heroes talk tough. They
crack wise. They shoot, and are shot at; beat, and are
beaten. They are frequently ladies' men, and are almost
always borderline alcoholics. Most of the time, they wage
one-man campaigns-quests, really-for justice and
righteousness and fair play, the way they see it, although
they are not above bending the law to suit their own
purposes. They have been called existential, these men who,
immersed to the neck in a callous, superficial world without
rules, make their own and stick to them. Imagine Bogart in
The Big Sleep or To Have and Have Not, and you'll have a
pretty good idea of the mythos at work here."
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