William Luhr is Professor of English at St. Peter's College, Co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation, and Standing Editor of the Oxford University Press Online Bibliography on Cinema and Media Studies. He is the editor of The Coen Brothers’ Fargo (2004) and The Maltese Falcon: John Huston, Director (1995) and the author of, amongst others, Screening Genders (with Krin Gabbard, 2008), Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, third edition (co-author with Peter Lehman, 2008) and Raymond Chandler and Film, second edition (1991).

• List of Plates ix Acknowledgments xiii1 Introduction 12 Historical Overview 203 Critical Overview 504 Murder, My Sweet 735 Out of the Past 1006 Kiss Me Deadly 1237 The Long Goodbye 1468 Chinatown 1719 Seven 191Afterword 215References 217Further Reading 223Index 225

“It is the most comprehensive and lucid study of the genre I have read … I was also impressed with Luhr's handling of the shift in Hollywood from the 1930s to 1940s. The morally compromised "heroes" of the 1940s were unthinkable in the 1930s. Like all good film critics, Luhr makes me want to see my favorite films again because he has shown me things I missed. And then there are all those films I didn't see that are now on my list because of William Luhr.”  (Carl Rollyson, 16 June 2012)