The pulp novel I chose to read for this week was The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. The book was pretty clearly in the detective genre, and felt like I was reading the script to a noir film. Not surprisingly, after I finished reading the book, I checked on Wikipedia and found out that there was a 1946 film with Humphrey Bogart based off of the book.
There were quite a few "detective genre" markers throughout the book. Most obviously, the protagonist, Phillip Marlowe, is a private eye. He's hired to investigate a financial claim that spirals into a bigger and bigger story. He almost completely fits the archetype of a noir detective - always smoking or having a drink, sharp wit ("Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?" "No. But I'm having a lot of fun trying to guess what they are."), and always ahead of the cops. Another staple of the genre is a sexy, seductive woman that tries to tempt the main character. This ends up playing significantly into the end of the book, when Carmen's failure to do so helps Marlowe to solve the whereabouts of Rusty.
Many of the characters in the book are involved involved in some sort of ethically questionable activity or another, including blackmailing, bootlegging, peddling smut, gambling, homicide, bribery, and cover-ups. There's quite a few actions that Marlowe has to take throughout the novel that provide as strong genre markers as well. He interrogates almost every character he runs across, trails multiple people's cars, searches people's houses, searches crime scenes, and searches dead bodies. At the end though, he solves the case through the big picture rather than small material details.
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