Many sorts of pleasure have been claimed for and by readers of crime fiction: the ratiocinative pleasure of puzzle-solving; the satisfaction of seeing morality prevail and order restored; the perverse enjoyment arising from having our suspicions about the corruption of our society, its leaders and its values confirmed; participation in the wistful hope that actions based on goodness and principle may succeed; reassurance that the domestic lives of our heroes and heroines are just like ours; and, starting with Paul Cain and Raoul Whitfield, Horace McCoy and Jim Thompson, the cold embrace of nihilism and the apocalypse.