If the literature of Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald, Leonard, Raymond, Ellroy, Sallis, Pelecanos, Bruen, & Peace does not question the fundamentals of right & wrong, does not investigate the morality of death, the ethics of existence, does not approach life with devastating truth – see Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Daniel Woodrell’s The Death of Sweet Mister, or Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River (to name but a few) – then what literature does? Crime writing is the pre-eminent literature of this generation, it chronicles urban life… not ivory towers or ouroborosian wank.
A Shout Out is when something related to the mystery or crime fiction genre gets mentioned somewhere outside the usual community places.
