Hardboiled

Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre sharing the setting with crime fiction (especially detective stories), but although deriving from romantic tradition which emphasized the emotions of apprehension, horror and terror, and awe, the hardboiled fiction deviates from the tradition in the detective's cynical attitude towards those emotions. The attitude is conveyed through the detective's self-talk describing to the reader (or - in the film - to the viewer) what he is doing and feeling. The genre's typical protagonist was a detective having to witness on a daily basis the violence of the organized crime flourishing during the prohibition, and having on the other hand to deal with the legal system that had become as corrupt as the organized crime itself, making him a burnout hero.