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From Falling Beams To Fallen Souls : The Ethical Development Of The Hard-Boiled Detective Novel, Kevin Chaffee
From Falling Beams To Fallen Souls : The Ethical Development Of The Hard-Boiled Detective Novel, Kevin Chaffee
Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects
The hard-boiled detective story ushered in a revolution in the mystery story. The older "formal" mystery story saw society as a benevolent, ordering force which the detective restored by catching the murderer, while the hard-boiled mystery portrayed society as corrupt, wild and flawed, and presented an implicit criticism of it. The three best writers of the hard-boiled school, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald, show an ethical progression, a turning outward, from the personal, inwardly focused ethics of Hammett's characters to the outwardly turned moral understanding of Macdonald's hero.
Dashiell Hammett writes of an ironic, tough world that the …