The focus of this broadly based analysis is on representative noir stories and novels, and the dialogs, voice-over, and stage directions of films such as The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, This Gun for Hire, The Killers, Gun Crazy, The Asphalt Jungle, Criss Cross, Night and the City, and Odds Against Tomorrow, in which the "invisible writing" Philip Marlowe once mentions in Farewell, My Lovely is traced. The author not only takes a fresh look at the works of the usual suspects Hammett, Chandler, and Cain but also of Cornell Woolrich, W.R. Burnett, Lionel White,...