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[Ben Yagoda]

OED, "2.c.
Designating a gritty, realistic style of fiction, esp. detective fiction;
of or characteristic of such fiction.”

First cite, January 1929.

Here’s an earlier one, from *The American Mercury, *May 1926, via Google
Books: "How they sentimentalize about themselves and their pasts, this
hard-boiled school of writers!”

The phrase “hard-boiled,” meaning tough (OED 2.b.), had been around since
the late nineteenth century, according to the OED, and was in fairly wide
circulation at the time. In Hemingway’s *The Sun Also Rises *(1926), the
narrator, Jake Barnes, reflects, "“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled
about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”

The OED has a citation under this definition from *Century Magazine *in
June 1928: "A hard-boiled, two-fisted, super-sleuth of the secret service
tells the story of his adventurous dealings with the underworld of all
nations."

Ben

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