Hardboiled

Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective stories). Derived from the romantic tradition which emphasized the emotions of apprehension, awe, horror and terror, hardboiled fiction deviates from that tradition in the detective's cynical attitude towards those emotions. The attitude is conveyed through the detective's inner monologue describing to the audience what he is doing and feeling.

The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who witnesses daily the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that had become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are classic antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and The Continental Op.

The term comes from a process of hardening one's egg; to be hardboiled is to be comparatively tough. The hardboiled detective—originated by Carroll John Daly's Terry Mack and Race Williams and both epitomized and popularized by Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe—not only solves mysteries, like his "softer" counterparts, the protagonist confronts violence on a regular basis leading to burnout and a cynical (so-called "tough") attitude towards one's own emotions.

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