Noir fiction

While the classic hardboiled private detective—as exemplified by the creations of writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane—may bend or break the law, this is done by a protagonist with meaningful agency in pursuit of justice, and "although not every one of their cases may have a happy conclusion, the hero nonetheless will emerge with a clean ethical slate.

"[3][4][5] Noir works, on the other hand,whether films, novels, or short stories, are existential pessimistic tales about people, including (or especially) protagonists who are seriously flawed and morally questionable.

The tone is generally bleak and nihilistic, with characters whose greed, lust, jealousy, and alienation lead them into a downward spiral as their plans and schemes inevitably go awry.

[8] Similarly, Johnny Temple, founder of Akashic Books, observed that noir fiction tends to be written by "authors whose life circumstances often place them in environments vulnerable to crime.

[8] Other important early American writers in the noir genre include Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, Horace McCoy, and David Goodis.

In the 1950s, Fawcett Books' Gold Medal imprint was instrumental in releasing noir and crime novels from such writers as Elliott Chaze, Charles Williams, Gil Brewer, Harry Whittington, Peter Rabe, and Lionel White, as well as Goodis and Thompson.

On one hand, there is the Mediterranean lifestyle—fine wine and fine food, friendship, conviviality, solidarity, blue skies and limpid seas—an art of living brought almost to perfection.

[20] Norris Eppes suggests that Intruder in the Dust (1948) by William Faulkner and Deliverance (1970) by James Dickey were the earliest examples of rural noir.

He interviewed seven authors who write rural noir fiction: Brian Panowich, Karin Slaughter, Attica Locke, Ace Atkins, Tom Franklin, John Hart, and James Sallis, who all give their opinions on the genre.

[16] In Australia, outback noir increasingly includes issues relating to Indigenous Australians,[17] such as the dispossession of land from Aboriginal peoples[21] and racism.