The “hard-boiled” stories published in Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Clues featured a new kind of hero and soon challenged the popularity of the British mysteries that held readers in thrall on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the 1920s a distinctively American detective fiction emerged from the pages of pulp magazines. Now the pages of these novels and their close cousins, the pulp magazines, have become rich canvases for working out struggles over readers' class and consumer identities.' -Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University Reseña del editor: Wilson, author of Cap Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth Century America 'Picking up a classic 'hard-boiled' detective novel by Dashiell Hammet or Raymond Chandler-or even modern-day Sara Paretsky-is an entirely different experience after reading Smith's fascinating book. A lively, engaging book that ranges from the linguistics to the sartorial dimensions of the genre, from labor to cultural capital, from advertising copy to literary theory.' -Christopher P.

Moreover, Smith's careful research persuasively reconstructs the proletarian readers who left no written records of their experience, thus making a substantial contribution to the field of working-class studies.' -The Journal of American History 'Erin Smith's Hard-Boiled is an extremely interesting and well-written analysis of the pulp magazines.' -American Literature 'Hard-Boiled a valuable contribution to the study of American literature between the wars.' -Modern Fiction Studies 'Not until Erin Smith's innovative study have we had such a fully-grounded look at the imagined community of working-class fraternity, masculinity, and consumerism through which pulp audiences interpreted the 'fast-talking' heroes of hard-boiled detective fiction. Smith's deft readings demonstrate the often surprising ambiguity of the pulps' gender, labor, and consumer politics.' -Novel: A Forum on Fiction 'One of the few works of pure American Studies that I have as yet encountered, Hard-Boiled is a work of interdisciplinary scholarship.' -Journal of Social History 'Hard-Boiled ably demonstrates that detective pulp fiction functioned contradictorily, simultaneously empowering its readers and keeping them in line. '.offers a thoroughly inventive approach to sensational crime fiction.

Hard-Boiled by Erin A. Smith