With an eye towards the origins and development of the hard-boiled story, Panek comments both on the way it has changed since the 1970s and examines the work of ten significant contemporary hard-boiled writers: Robert B. Parker; James Crumley; Loren Estleman; Sara Paretsky; Robert Crais; James Lee Burke; and Walter Mosley. The new writers have used the hard-boiled story and the hard-boiled hero to make powerful statements about reality in the last quarter of the 20th century.