In hard boiled sentimentality the secret history of american crime stories leonard cassuto tells us that the serial killer and the domestic detective have evolved out of the history of hard boiled fiction and hard boiled fiction has evolved out of its twentieth century us surroundings 270 and his book covers that history through an . Crime fiction meanwhile continued to flourish not only detective stories but also a nihilistic version of the hard boiled that some critics unnecessarily i believe separate under the category of noir a designation that follows from the cinematic style whose popularity was also peaking at the time1 before i turn to the anxious . At the beginning i was skeptical about the connection between hard boiled crime fiction and sentimentality no longer cassutos argument is totally convincing as is his linkage of the devolving domestic detective and the rise of serial killer as counterpoints to the same sentimentally idealized image of the american family. We will get them leonard cassuto s hard boiled sentimentality the secret history of american crime stories answers this question by identifying sentimentality as the buried topos of the crime novel and by implication its descendant the television crime serial. Hard boiled sentimentality book description leonard cassutos cultural history links the testosterone saturated heroes of american crime stories to the sensitive women of the nineteenth century sentimental novel