philip marlowe, noirish, pulpy, film noir, dashiell hammett, gumshoe, droll, holmesian, grand guignol, patricia highsmith, dorothy sayers, unheroic, picaresque, femmes fatales, suave, misanthropic, runyonesque, georges simenon, alexander woollcott, dislikable, gruff, blackhearted, taciturn, raffish, hemingwayesque, rakish, humorless, inspector maigret, satiric, le carre, cyberpunk, hitchcockian, dostoyevskian, sherlockian, straitlaced, lunkheaded, crackerjack, wry, acidulous, smirky, saturnine, quippy, urbane, erudite, crusading, double indemnity, sardonic, mephistophelean, moralistic, scabrous, seriocomedy, overfamiliar, femme fatale, clubbable, mordant, elmore leonard, tommy gun, seriocomic, supercilious, cameoing, epicene, epigrammatic, lamby, glib, straightlaced, evelyn waugh, gritty, muckraking, unctuous, hardbitten, frowsy, witty, sententious, lincoln steffens, gamy, smarmy, dishy, weaselly, deadpan, romcom, rebarbative, donnish, neurasthenic, wittedness, john le carre, unembellished, juiceless, sly, doltish, pugilistic, unsentimental, nabokovian, robert mitchum, crusty, unsweet, stolid, slangy, amoral, unshowy, swiftian, cloddish, jamesian, realist, absurdist, melodramatic, nonsense, sensationalist, shavian, dagger, fact, novelistic, unimaginative, boiled, didactic, dystopian, epic, fictional, hardheaded