The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. There has been so much of this sort of thing that if a character in a detective story says, "Yeah," the author is automatically a Hammett imitator. Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder" (1950)
posted on Sep 24, 2008 - View this thread

It's Telly Friday, baby.
posted on Dec 14, 2007 - View this thread

Twenty hard-boiled pulp stories from a revived Black Mask Magazine. (Unfortunately, stories are mostly in PDF form.)
posted on Oct 10, 2007 - View this thread

A creepy old man, known as Mr. Six, has spent the last couple of years dancing on commercials for Six Flags amusement parts. He's clearly a fake old man (a young person in makeup). So who plays Mr. Six? Six Flags won't say, many people speculate, but this guys thinks he knows.
posted on Jul 26, 2005 - View this thread

A Glossary of HardBoiled Slang will allow you to understand such wonderful, alliterative phrases as:

"You dumb mug, get your mitts off the marbles before I stuff that mud-pipe down your mush - and tell your moll to hand over the mazuma."

Welcome to the world of HardBoiled Fiction. Take some time to brush up on the classics.
posted on Apr 27, 2002 - View this thread

37 year old self-appointed detective fools potential pedophiles with usernames like "dadanddaughtersex." Not only is there no victim, there cannot not be a crime because of the woman's true age, and the method of 'baiting' pedophile suspects looks like a violation of one's civil rights. On top of that her pedophile website is quite the money-maker, churning $1,000 a month in advertising revenue. Illegal entrapment or civic minded vigilante? Obviously this is a touchy subject, but I can't see the different between this and a plain-clothed police officer asking everyone on the street if they want to buy illegal drugs or guns just for a quick bust.
posted on Jan 18, 2002 - View this thread