hardboiled

thumb|The cover of seminal hardboiled magazine Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask, September 1929, featuring part 1 of its serialization of The Maltese Falcon, by [[Dashiell Hammett. Illustration of private eye Sam Spade by Henry C. Murphy Jr.]]

Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Nick Charles, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.