History of crime fiction quite complicated, forcing him to embark on an odyssey through the urban landscape. He is involved with organized crime and other lowlifes on the "mean streets" of, preferably, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, or Chicago. A hard-boiled private eye has an ambivalent attitude towards the police. It is his ambition to save America and rid it of its mean elements all by himself. As Raymond Chandler's protagonist Philip Marlowe—immortalized by actor Humphrey Bogart in the movie adaptation (1946) of the novel "The Big Sleep" (1939)—admits to his client, General Sternwood, he finds it rather tiresome, as an individualist, to
The Informer (novel) by Arthur Robison in 1929. The Informer (novel) The Informer is a novel by Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty published in 1925. It received the 1925 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Set in 1920's Dublin in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War, the novel centers on Gypo Nolan. Having disclosed the whereabouts of his friend Frankie McPhillip to the police, Gypo finds himself hunted by his revolutionary comrades for this betrayal. Most famously, the novel was made into a film of the same name by John Ford in 1935 starring Victor McLaglen as Gypo Nolan. An earlier film adaptation also