SOURCE: Hoppenstand, Gary. “British Noir: The Crime Fiction of W. W. Jacobs.” Journal of Popular Culture 32, no. 1 (summer 1998): 151-63.

In the following essay, Hoppenstand examines several of Jacobs's detective stories, classifying them as British noir.

In most discussions of noir literature, it is frequently argued by critics that this genre of crime fiction is distinctly American in origin. Evolving out of the moral and social excesses of the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s and finding a sympathetic audience during the bleak decade of the Great Depression, these critics contend, noir stories feature plots that highlight a dark, urban setting in which characters find themselves trapped by fierce hedonistic passions for greed or sex, or trapped by an indifferent social system where the pursuit of Justice translates into mere police brutality, or perhaps even trapped by everyday events beyond their ability to control. Noir was first published in the...