Miskatonic University Press

William Denton <wtd@pobox.com>

RARA-AVIS: The Top 100 Hardboiled and Noir Characters

In April 2002 Joe Dante and Mark Blumenthal took a poll to see what what hardboiled and noir characters were the favourites of people on the mailing list. The top 100 ended up having 111 entries because of ties. Mark Blumenthal said:

"Here is our selection of the 100 (actually 111) best hard boiled characters. Although there are several many of us would not consider hard boiled, most of our ballots had a large majority of characters who made it into the top 111.... We had over 50 write-ins so the voters could hardly be considered intimidated. I think being able to see who others voted for led to more interest. I doubt we would have come close to the 73 voters we had if we had not had everybody reveal for whom he or she voted. Of those authors who had more than three characters in the best 111, Dashiell Hammett had six characters, and Walter Mosley, George Pelecanos, Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, and James Ellroy had four apiece. Of those characters that debuted in the '90s Easy Rawlins and Harry Bosch received the most votes."

(The number at the end of each entry is how many votes were cast for that character.)

Last updated: 25 June 2006 20:46:07 EDT