© Columbia University Press
Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories
Paper, 344 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12691-5
$27.50
/ £19.00
October, 2008
Cloth, 344 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12690-8
$79.50
/ £55.00
"Leonard Cassuto takes a fresh and deeply informed look at the whole history of hard-boiled fiction, uncovering its links to longstanding American notions of home and family as well as to the shifting pressures and priorities of successive eras. His readings of Dreiser, Hammett, Jim Thompson, John D.MacDonald, and Thomas Harris are lively and constantly alert to unexpected echoes and affinities—from Grandma Moses to The Wealth of Nations." — Geoffrey O’Brien, Executive Editor, The Library of America, author of Hard-Boiled America
"A fascinating history of the 'softening' of hard-boiled crime fiction . . . Highly recommended." — Choice
"One of the finest historical/critical works of recent memory." — JOn L. Breen, Mystery Scene
"A valuable chronicle of crime writing from the 1920s to now." — Elizabeth Emanuel, M/C Reivews
"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
"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
"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
"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—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—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
"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