Shouldn't this period extend further than the beginning of World War II? A good deal of classic Noir stories were written and set during the war and in the post war period. See for example, The Long Goodbye, and Double Indemnity. I would suggest moving the end of the period to 1959, the year Playback, Chandler's last novel was published.
Edited by TrickyDick42 Hide / Show Replies
Suggesting the following changes to the description, moving the general examples above the Examples line and explaining the name of trope:
The period of the classic American detective stories, especially the hard boiled ones. The classic era of Film Noir.
War may be happening in Europe, but for the moment it's still the Jazz Age in the USA. Newspapers are sold by young, possibly disabled, boys on the street. Businesses are run by Corrupt Corporate Executives, and while the well-off enjoy nightclubs, the after-effects of The Great Depression still overshadow the lives of the poor.
The Trope Namer is Stephen King's short story "Umney's Last Case", named in honor of Raymond Chandler, writer of The Big Sleep in 1939 and adapter of the screenplay for James M. Cain's Double Indemnity in 1944, making him one of the major Trope Makers and Codifiers of this vision of America.
In King's story, private eye Umney suggests it is "1938, maybe '39, maybe even 1940" and calls this "eighteen months or so before the start of World War II". (Hah! Try telling a European that!) Prohibition is probably over, but the power that The Mob gained in that period means they run many of the bars and clubs. The police may be trustworthy or they may be corrupt. They may very well be brutal.
Everyone wears hats.
Differs from the Genteel Interbellum Setting, with which it overlaps with the last years of, in being more urban, more cynical, more violent, more temporally specific (in contrast to the Genteel Interbellum Setting's chronological indeterminacy, Chandler American Time is confined to the very tail end of the epoch) and geographically confined to the USA.
Crimes are committed by the kinds of people who commit crimes in real life, and by realistic methods. Shootings by ex-gangsters trying to prevent their past being exposed? Yes. Chief of French police chopping a millionaire's head off, then switching it with another head he pinched from the guillotine, all because the policeman was an atheist and wanted to stop the millionaire leaving his fortune to the church? No. (That's the actual solution of Father Brown: The Secret Garden!)
Since elaborate but silly murder methods are out, any crime must have many suspects and incredibly tangled motives in order to be puzzling. This is usually helped along by having the poor sap that kicks off the plot being a bit of an Asshole Victim.
Reposting what Tricky Dick said back in 2012:
I'd cautiously agree. It's a Tropes Are Flexible issue, I think. Like Genteel Interbellum Setting, it seems to be more about a certain look, mood, and culture than specific dates. I'd tend to say Chandler AT generally starts somewhere toward the end of Prohibition (though some works can be set earlier, ahead of their time or just anachronistic on the author's part) and ends roughly in the early '50s (but can hang on longer, much like the lingering effects of World War II or the last hurrah of a dying age).
Edited by Unsung