noir/hardboiled what the difference?

anyone?

For me hard-boiled is more straight forward it tries to be realistic by portraying violence starkly and with heroes as comfortable with violence as the villains, but retaining a world of fairly clear cut good guys vs. bad guys, even both are equally hard-hitting, hard drinking, hard swearing, and hard on their women.

Noir seek to be realistic in a different way by recognizing the good and bad in both sides, either by having flawed and damaged heroes who struggle with the dark side and temptation, or even making the criminals the protaganists. Good and bad guys are equally likely to come to a bad end or at best ambivalent end and any goodness is a constantly threatened candle in the darkness.

Good question. I agree with quartzite's description. I think of noir as maybe not as brutal but far darker, with more disturbing elements.

Using movies as an example, I'd classify "The Untouchables" as hard-boiled but non noir, "The Third Man" as noir but not hard-boiled, and "Chinatown" as both hard-boiled and noir.

Noir is the atmosphere, the world. Hardboiled is the character, the attitude. For instance, Roger Smith's books are full-on noir, but not hardboiled, because the main characters are ordinary, everyday kinds of people (as opposed to a bitter, cynical, snarky hardboiled hero).

5> oh like that nice summary

I noticed that this group shows 376 members. I may be seeing this wrong, but a lot of the posts seem old. I love these books and hope I am viewing this all wrong as far as group activity.???

I am fairly new to LibraryThing and certainly could be messed up.

Smaller groups like this one tend have pretty sporadic posting.

One of the main differences is that a 'hard-boiled' detective is one who is brought in from the outside (of the crime) to solve the case and in 'noir' the protagonist is tied directly to the crime (he/she is involved somehow)

nods with noir it is personal.