Hard-Boiled Sentimentality

"Leonard Cassuto's thesis is both original and intriguing, and the case he makes for it well-constructed and convincing. I'm looking at crime fiction and film differently since I read this book. Highly recommended." -- S.J. Rozan, Edgar Award-winning novelist and author of In This Rain "Leonard Cassuto's Hard-Boiled Sentimentality opens new possibilities of reading for students of popular crime fiction. A superb work of literary and cultural history, the book captures and holds the reader with fresh insights on every page." -- Alan Trachtenberg, Yale University "James Ellroy used to claim his books were for the whole family& mdash;if the name of your family is Manson. Ellroy's quip encircles Leonard Cassuto's study of the American crime novel and American domesticity-part noose, part necklace& mdash;as Cassuto tracks and fragments the traditional oppositions of hard-boiled versus sentimental with wit, daring, and originality." -- Robert Polito, author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson and editor of Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s " Hard-Boiled Sentimentality is an ambitious and wide-ranging book, with the potential to revise our understanding of not only the detective genre but also, more broadly, the afterlife of sentimentalism. " -- Glenn Hendler, Fordham University "Cassuto has put together a captivating body of material, a groundbreaking approach, top-drawer scholarly skills and instincts, and a splendid writing style." -- Catherine Nickerson, author of Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women "Leonard Cassuto adds an encyclopedic grasp of the developmental history of crime literature, and he discusses it with refreshing clarity. Hard-Boiled Sentimentality should be widely read and will almost certainly become definitive." -- Sean McCann, Wesleyan University, author of Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism "A clear-eyed, original, and important study that I found endlessly fascinating. Hard-Boiled Sentimentality is also as well-written and compelling as a good crime novel." -- Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Paranoia "Leonard Cassuto convincingly presents crime fiction as American family culture's truest mirror throughout the decades. Hard-Boiled Sentimentality is a non-fiction epic that reads like the best of genre fiction, tracing the bloodlines of crime fiction from Sam Spade to Hannibal Lecter. Cassuto's scholarship is impeccable; his narrative voice magnetic. A must-read for every student of genre fiction and the go-to source for the evolutionary history of noir." -- Julia Spencer-Fleming, author of I Shall Not Want

Leonard Cassuto's cultural history links the testosterone-saturated heroes of American crime stories to the sensitive women of the nineteenth-century sentimental novel. From classics like The Big Sleep and The Talented Mr. Ripley to neglected paperback gems, Cassuto chronicles the dialogue--centered on the power of sympathy--between these popular genres and the sweeping social changes of the twentieth century, ending with a surprising connection between today's serial killers and the domestic fictions of long ago.