Perdue is the perfect parody of the hard-boiled detective.

And there was a subgenre that intrigued him all the more: "hard-boiled detectives."

Actually, Spenser only looks like a hard-boiled detective.

A bullet can slow down your average hard-boiled detective, but a baby will drop him in his tracks.

Yet, there is never a point in which the hard-boiled detective disappears.

They were in the office of a private investigator, a shamus, a gum-shoe, a hard-boiled detective.

He is best known for his hard-boiled detective, Cole Black, featured in a variety of comix between 1976 and 2006.

Once they reach middle age, most hard-boiled detectives either soften up or become hopelessly cynical.

But it also sets a limit to how much of the shell of this hard-boiled detective is going to be stripped away.

Carter said "This idea of the hard-boiled detective is a kind of cliché".