Defining Hard-boiled and Noir Fiction

And Friday's First Hard-boiled Bullet of Prose

Definition of hard-boiled from Encyclopedia Britannica: Hard-boiled fiction, a tough, unsentimental style of American crime writing that brought a new tone of earthy realism or naturalism to the field of detective fiction. Hard-boiled fiction used graphic sex and violence, vivid but often sordid urban backgrounds, and fast-paced, slangy dialogue.

My definition of noir fiction: The noir protagonist crosses a line that can’t be uncrossed. That line might be murder or betraying a lover, and no matter how much the noir protagonist struggles to survive, it’s ultimately hopeless. Wikipedia has a different definition that I’ll include here: Noir fiction (or roman noir) is a subgenre of crime fiction. In this subgenre, right and wrong are not clearly defined, while the protagonists are seriously and often tragically flawed.

Every Friday I’m going to take a short bullet of hard-boiled prose from one of my novels and publish it here. The first bullet is from Pariah.

He had a toughness about him, and his five grand Savile Row suit did little to hide the fact that he worked out regularly. He looked like someone who could've gone either way, the mob or something legitimate, and somehow ended up in the middle as a lawyer.