 They often had a predilection for certain casts of characters and settings, with the secluded English country house at the top of the list.One reaction to the conventionality of British murder mysteries was American "hard-boiled" crime fiction, epitomized by the writings of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane, among others.Though the settings were grittier, the violence more abundant and the style more colloquial, plots were, as often as not, whodunits constructed in much the same way as the "cozier" British mysteries.