Hardboiled crime fiction's a literary style distinguished by an unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex. Pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined by Raymond Chandler beginning in the late 1930s, hardboiled fiction's most commonly associated with detective stories. From its earliest days, hardboiled fiction was published in and closely associated with so-called pulp magazines, most famously Black Mask.… (More on Hardboiled)