Raymond Chandler

Classic Mystery Literature

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

RAYMOND CHANDLER
(1888-1959)

Categories:

Hard Boiled,

Links

The Raymond Chandler Web Site

Raymond Chandler must be placed among the mystery greats. The creation of Philip Marlowe, despite the influence of Dashiell Hammett, was, is and will be the most famous US fictional PI. Born in Chicago, Chandler grew up in the UK after his parents' divorce where he attended the Dulwich College homeparatory School in London. He also studied in France and Germany. Before going back to the US in 1912 he worked as a teacher at Dulwich as well as reporter for the Daily Express and Western Gazette. Following a number of jobs (including bookkeeper), he served in the Canadian Army and the Royal Air Force during World War I. After the war he worked in a San Francisco Bank and wrote for the Daily Express before becoming first bookkeeper and later auditor for Dabney Oil Syndicate from 1922 to 1932. In 1924 he married Pearl Cecily Hurlburt, 18 years his senior. After being sacked during the Great Depression, backed by his wife he dedicated himself entirely to fiction. He studied the main pulp fiction writers and after five months finished his first story Blackmailers Don't Shoot which was published in December 1933 in the Black Mask Magazine. Between 1933 and 1939 he wrote nineteen pulp stories, eleven published in Black Mask, seven in the Dime Detective and one in the Detective Fiction Weekly. His fourth published story, Killer in the Rain, was the foundation of The Big Sleep (1939), his first novel, introducing Philip Marlowe who became the prototype US hard-boiled PI. After several successful Marlowe novels - including The Long Goodbye for which he won the Edgar in 1955 - he worked for the movie world. In 1944 with Billy Wilder he adapted a James Cain novel for Double Indemnity; in 1946 for The Blue Dahlia and for Hitchkock's adaptation of Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. He even discussed the making of The Big Sleep and wrote a new ending for it. His wife died in 1954 leaving him devastated. He left us five years later with an unfinished novel, Poodle Springs later completed by Robert Parker, and a type of manifesto, The Simple Art of Murder (1944), an explanation of his side of crime writing.

Vote for your favorite book by Raymond Chandler:

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE BIG SLEEP

Chandler's first novel, published in 1939, introduces Philip Marlowe, a 38-year-old P.I. moving through the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s. This classic case involves a paralyzed California millionaire, his two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder.

FAREWELL MY LOVELY

Marlowe stumbles upon a murder in '30s L.A., taking in the city's gambling circuit and three deadly beauties en route.

THE HIGH WINDOW

Raymond Chandler's gripping novel is set in the California underworld, where Philip Marlowe searches for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in the tangled affairs of a dead coin collector.

THE LADY IN THE LAKE

Philip Marlowe goes out of his usual city habitat into the mountains outside of Los Angeles in his strange search for a missing woman.

THE LITTLE SISTER

Chandler's fifth novel has Philip Marlowe going to Hollywood as he explores the underworld of glitter capital, trying to find a sweet young thing's missing brother. In deep with a rising movie star, her blackmailing brother, agents, prostitutes, and studio heads, Marlowe sardonically takes on the interlocking levels of Hollywood society

THE LONG GOODBYE (Classic Mystery Fiction)

Raymond Chandler's ingenious novel finds Philip Marlowe constantly on the move with a case involving a war scarred drunk and his nymphomaniac wife. A psychotic gangster's on his trail; he's in trouble with the cops, and an unequaled number of corpses turns up.

PLAYBACK

As Chandler's last novel opens, Philip Marlowe meets a well-endowed redhead as she disembarks from the Super Chief and leads him to the California coast to solve a tale of big money and, of course, murder.

POODLE SPRINGS (finished by Robert Parker)

Philip Marlowe marries a rich, beautiful society lady who wants him to settle down. But old habits die hard, and Marlowe soon is back in business, enmeshing a case involving pornography, bigamy, and murder.

COLLECTIONS

TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS

A collection of four classic Marlowe mysteries: Trouble Is My Business, Finger Man, Goldfish, and Red Wind.

THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER

The Simple Art of Murder contains Chandler's essay on the art of detective stories and a collection of eight classic Chandler mysteries. This is the best of Chandler's pulp stories - plus his notorious attack on Britain's "Golden Age" eminencies.

STORIES AND EARLY NOVELS OF RAYMOND CHANDLER

In Raymond Chandler's hands, the pulp crime story became a haunting mystery of power and corruption, set against a modern cityscape both lyrical and violent. With humor, and an unerring sense of dialogue and the telling detail he created a fictional universe out of the dark side of sunlit Los Angeles. In the process, he transformed both the crime novel and American writing. Stories and Early Novels includes the first three novels featuring Chandler's great creation, private eye Philip Marlow: tough, disillusioned, and sensitive. In The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The High WIndow, Marlow's investigations lead him from Los Angeles shanties and honkey tonks to the highest reaches of power, encountering a world of gangsters and crooked politicans, lost souls and small-time operators. Thirteen stories from the pulp magazines Black Mask and Dime Detective include such classics as "Red Wind" and "Trouble Is My Business." The volume, with its companion, Later Novels and Other Writings, comprise the most comhomehensive edition available of America's greatest mystery writer.

LATER NOVELS & OTHER WRITINGS OF RAYMOND CHANDLER

Later Novels and Other Writings begins with The Lady in the Lake (1943). Written during the war, the story takes Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the search for a businessman's missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler's later fiction is evident in The Little Sister (1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and a seemingly naive young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, are the key players in a plot that provides fuel for a bitter indictment of Hollywood and Chandler's most savage portrayal of his adopted city. The Long Goodbye (1953), his most ambitious and self-revealing novel, uncovers a more anguished resonance in the Marlowe character, in a plot that hinges on the betrayal of friendship and the compromises of middle age. Playback (1958), written originally as a screenplay, is Chandler's seventh and last novel. A special feature of this volume is Chandler's long-unavailable screenplay for the film noir classic Double Indemnity (1944), adapted from James M. Cain's novel. Supplementing the volume, and providing a more personal glimpse of Chandler's personality, are a selection of essays - including "The Simple Art of Murder," in which Chandler muses on his pulp roots and on the special qualities of his hero and style - and eleven letters that range wittily and often sardonically over the worlds of writing, publishing, and filmmaking.