Why Hardboiled Isn’t Noir – Cameron Cooper's Science Fiction

Every now and then, a book surprises me. I finished S.J. Morden’s One Way a couple of nights ago and immediately bought No Way.

That’s actually pretty unusual for me. My ereader has hundreds of unread books waiting patiently in line, so buying the sequel before I’ve even had time to think about the first book says something.

The interesting part is that it isn’t because I love the protagonist. Frank isn’t especially likeable. He complains. He grumbles. He has a knack for making terrible situations feel even more miserable. But Morden poses a question that I absolutely have to know the answer to. Does Frank make it home?

And, perhaps more importantly, do the people responsible for all this eventually get what’s coming to them?

That’s a surprisingly powerful hook. It has carried me through one book and halfway through the second without letting go. Reading One Way also reminded me of something that I often come across in reading circles: Hardboiled isn’t the same thing as noir.

People often use the terms interchangeably because both genres are gritty. Bad things happen. Good people get hurt. The world isn’t fair.

But that’s where the similarities stop.

Noir is fundamentally pessimistic. People are trapped by fate, by their flaws, or by the choices they’ve already made. The ending is often inevitable, and rarely happy.

Hardboiled stories are different. The world may be just as corrupt, but the protagonist still has a code. They may get beaten down, outnumbered, betrayed, and shot at, but they keep trying to do the right thing. The point isn’t that the world deserves saving. The point is that somebody has to try.

Frank is exactly that sort of character. Even the crime that landed him where he is wasn’t motivated by greed. It was a selfless act and he accepted the consequences. He’s rough around the edges, stubborn, and frequently exasperating, but underneath it all he has principles. That’s what makes him compelling.

As I was thinking about this, I realized something about my own books. I’ve had readers tell me they were disappointed by the ending of the Ptolemy Lane Tales. They expected something darker. More major character deaths. More shocking betrayals. More “Red Wedding.”

Instead, they got an ending that was… hopeful.

Ptolemy Lane was never a noir protagonist. He’s hardboiled. He’s gruff. Suspicious. Frequently growling at people. If you met him in a dark alley, you’d probably cross the street.

But underneath all that, he’s basically a cinnamon bun.

He has an unshakeable moral compass. He protects people. He does the right thing even when it’s inconvenient, expensive, or dangerous. He’ll complain about it every step of the way, but he’ll still do it.

That’s not noir. That’s hardboiled.

Maybe that’s why the ending of the series turned out the way it did. I didn’t consciously decide that everyone deserved a hopeful ending. I simply followed the character I’d created to his logical conclusion.

A hardboiled hero can lose battles. They can suffer. They can fail. But if they keep hold of their principles, then hope isn’t a betrayal of the story. It’s the point.