Leonard Cassuto 
Hard-Boiled Sentimentality 
The Secret History of American Crime Stories

Leonard Cassuto’s cultural history links the testosterone-saturated heroes of American crime stories to the sensitive women of the nineteenth-century sentimental novel. From classics like
The Big Sleep and
The Talented Mr. Ripley to neglected paperback gems, Cassuto chronicles the dialogue–centered on the power of sympathy–between these popular genres and the sweeping social changes of the twentieth century, ending with a surprising connection between today’s serial killers and the domestic fictions of long ago.

About the author

Leonard Cassuto is professor of English at Fordham University and an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in academic journals and popular periodicals ranging from the
Wall Street Journal to Salon.com. He is the author of
The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture and the general editor of the forthcoming
Cambridge History of the American Novel.