The American Revolution: The Hard-boiled School

(Giving murder back to the people who are really good at it)

Pulp magazines (1920s)

• Carroll John Daly
• Race Williams
• Raoul Whitfield
• Black Mask Magazine - Joseph T. Shaw, editor

Dashiell Hammett : Creator of the P.I. novel

• The Continental Op: Red Harvest; The Dain Curse, (both 1929); short stories (1923 on)
• Sam Spade: The Maltese Falcon (1930)
• Nick and Nora Charles: The Thin Man (1934)

Raymond Chandler: The P.I. as knight-errant

• Philip Marlowe: The Big Sleep (1939); The Long Goodbye (1953)
• The Simple Art of Murder: manifesto of the American crime story (1944)

The private eye novel as an American institution

• Ross Macdonald
• John D. MacDonald
• Robert B. Parker
• Marcia Muller
• Sara Paretsky
• Jeremiah Healy
• Walter Mosley

Roman Noir: an offshoot of the Hammett/Chandler school

• Cornell Woolrich
• James M. Cain
• Jim Thompson

Important points:

• Private investigator as lonely fighter for justice
• Violence onstage
• Fear/hatred of women and the 'other'
• Corruption permeates society at all levels
• The city as character
• No 'return to moral order' as in classic (British) detective novels