“Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in Black Mask magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world. As in the film noir that they would inspire, the best hardboiled novels make style a primary means of delineating character and place.

 Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest (1929), is a bloody, amoral tale of a private detective in a corrupt mining town. Violence escalates almost comically, but the tight language is like Hemingway describing a Sergio Leone movie.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) begins with one of the greatest hardboiled opening lines: “They threw me off the hay truck at noon.” From there, James M Cain weaves a confessional tale of lust, greed, jealousy and murder.

The Long Goodbye (1953) has my vote for Chandler’s best novel. It’s not as finely honed as his earlier work, but feels richer and deeper, with an autumnal mood.

Jim Thompson’s bitter, cynical pulp masterpiece, Pop. 1280 (1964), is probably an acquired taste. The first-person narration, though, is brilliant, and the humour couldn’t be much blacker.

Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss (1996) is one of my favourite modern descendants of the genre. I’d place it on the Chandler branch of the family tree, mostly because Woodrell’s prose style is a sentence-by-sentence delight.”

—Charles Frazier is the author of COLD MOUNTAIN and the forthcoming NIGHTWOODS