Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an author of crime stories and novels of immense stylistic influence upon modern crime fiction, especially in the style of the writing and the attitudes now characteristic of the genre.

Easton Press Raymond Chandler books

3 volume set - 2003 - including titles:
The Big Sleep
Farewell, My Lovely

The Long Goodbye

Franklin Library Raymond Chandler books

Farewell, My Lovely - Library of Mystery Masterpieces - 1988

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Author Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1888, but moved to Britain in 1895 with his Irish-born mother after they were abandoned by his father, an alcoholic civil engineer for an American railway company. His uncle, a successful lawyer, supported them. In 1900, Chandler attended Dulwich College, London, where he was classically educated. He did not attend university, instead spending time in France and Germany. In 1907, he was naturalised as a British subject in order to take the Civil Service examination, which he passed with the third-highest score. He then took an Admiralty job lasting slightly more than a year. His first poem was published during that time.

Chandler disliked the servile mindset of the civil service and quit, to the consternation of his family. He then was an unsuccessful journalist, published reviews, and continued writing Romantic poetry. Accounting for that checkered time he said that "It was the age of the clever young man, but I was distinctly not a clever young man."

In 1912, he borrowed money from his uncle (who expected it repaid with interest), and returned to the U.S., eventually settling in Los Angeles. He strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a lonely time of scrimping and saving. Finally, he took a correspondence bookkeeping course, finished ahead of schedule, and found a steady job. In 1917, when the U.S. entered World War I, he enlisted in the Canadian Army, served in France, and was in flight training in England at war’s end.

After the armistice, he returned to Los Angeles with his mother, and soon began a love affair with Cissy Pascal, a married woman eighteen years his senior. Chandler's mother, who had opposed the union, died on 26 September 1923, and not long after, in 1924, Chandler and Pascal married. By 1932, in the course of his bookkeeping career, he became a vice-president of the Dabney Oil syndicate, but a year later, his alcoholism, absenteeism, and a threatened suicide provoked his firing.

Writer

To earn a living with his creative talent, he taught himself to write pulp fiction; his first story, “Blackmailers Don't Shoot”, was published in Black Mask magazine in 1933; his first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. Literary success led to Hollywood screenplay writer work: he and Billy Wilder co-wrote Double Indemnity (1944), based upon on James M. Cain's eponymous novel. His only original screenplay was The Blue Dahlia (1946). Chandler collaborated on the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951), a story he thought implausible. By then, the Chandlers had moved to La Jolla, California, a rich coastal town near San Diego.

In 1954, Cissy Chandler died of a long illness, during which time he wrote The Long Goodbye. Lonely and emotionally depressed, he returned to drink, never quitting it for long, and the quality and quantity of the writing suffered. In 1955, he attempted suicide; literary scholars documented that suicide attempt. In The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved (2007), Judith Freeman says it was “a cry for help”, given he called the police beforehand, saying he planned to kill himself. Raymond Chandler’s personal and professional life was both helped and complicated by the women to whom he was attracted — notably Helga Greene (his literary agent); Jean Fracasse (his secretary); Sonia Orwell (George Orwell's widow); and Natasha Spender (Stephen Spender's wife), the latter two of whom assumed Chandler to be a repressed homosexual. Note that Judith Freeman's book perpetuates errors dating back to the MacShane biography relating to the death of Florence Chandler and a number of residences.

Raymond Chandler Death

After time in England he returned to La Jolla, where he died of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and pre-renal uremia in the Scripps Memorial Hospital per the death certificate. Helga Greene inherited the Chandler estate after a lawsuit with Jean Fracasse. Raymond Chandler was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, San Diego, California, U.S.A., per Frank MacShane, The Raymond Chandler Papers, Chandler directed he be buried next to Cissy, but was buried in the cemetery's Potter’s Field, because of the lawsuit over his estate.

Raymond Chandler books

The Big Sleep (1939)
Farewell, My Lovely (1940)
The High Window (1942)
The Lady in the Lake (1943)
The Little Sister (1949)
The Long Goodbye (1954)
Playback (1958)
Poodle Springs (1959) (incomplete; completed by Robert B. Parker in 1989)

All concern the cases of a Los Angeles investigator named Philip Marlowe, "a nice clean private detective who wouldn't drop cigar ashes on the floor and never carried more than one gun," as Marlowe describes himself on the first page of The High Window. Farewell, My Lovely, The Big Sleep, and The Long Goodbye are arguably his masterpieces.

The Big Sleep - Philip Marlowe Series Book 1

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.... He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.

This is the Code of the Private Eye as defined by Raymond Chandler in his 1944 essay The Simple Act of Murder. Such a man was Philip Marlowe, private eye, an educated, heroic, streetwise, rugged individualist and the hero of Chandler's first novel, The Big Sleep. This work established Chandler as the master of the 'hard-boiled' detective novel, and his articulate and literary style of writing won him a large audience, which ranged from the man in the street to the most sophisticated intellectual.

Farewell, My Lovely - Philip Marlowe Series Book 2

Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

The Long Goodbye - Philip Marlowe Series Book 6

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to the only friend he can trust: private investigator Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is willing to help a man down on his luck, but later Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe is drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

Other Philip Marlowe Series Books include:

The High Window - Book 3

Toby Stephens stars in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Raymond Chandler’s third Philip Marlowe mystery.

Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the ’40s and ’50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily.

In The High Window, Marlowe starts out on the trail of a single stolen coin and ends up knee-deep in bodies. His client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part.

But Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. If Marlowe doesn’t wrap this one up fast, he’s going to end up in jail - or worse, in a box in the ground.

Starring Toby Stephens, this thrilling dramatisation by Robin Brooks retains all the wry humour of Chandler’s serpentine suspense novel. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 October 2011.

The Lady in the Lake - Book 4

A couple of missing wives one a rich man's and one a poor man's become the objects of Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

The Little Sister - Book 5

Raymond Chandler's fifth novel has Philip Marlowe going to Hollywood as he explores the underworld of the glitter capital, trying to find a sweet young thing's missing brother. Along the way he uncovers a little blackmail, a lot of drugs, and more than enough murder.

Playback - Book 7

As 'Playback', Chandler's last novel opens, Philip Marlowe meets Eleanor King (a.k.a. Betty Mayfield), 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.

Short Stories

Chandler's short stories typically chronicled the adventures of Philip Marlowe or other down-on-their luck private detectives (John Dalmas, Steve Grayce) or similarly inclined good samaritans (such as Mr. Carmady). Exceptions are the macabre "The Bronze Door" and "English Summer," a self-described Gothic romance set in the English countryside. Interestingly, in the 1950s radio series "The Adventures of Philip Marlowe," which included adaptations from the stories, other protagonists were exchanged for Marlowe (for example, Marlowe for Steve Grayce in the adaptation of "The King in Yellow").

Stories Featuring Philip Marlowe

Finger Man (1934)
Goldfish (1936)
Red Wind (1938)
Trouble is My Business (1939)
The Pencil (1961; originally Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate)

Trouble Is My Business

In the four long stories in this collection, Marlowe is hired to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs afoul of crooked politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an extortionist.

The four stories include:
Trouble is my business
Finger man
Goldfish
Red wind

The Red Wind

The Red Wind is not a novel but rather a short story written by Raymond Chandler. It was first published in 1938 and is one of Chandler's early works featuring his iconic private detective, Philip Marlowe. The story is known for its sharp dialogue, atmospheric setting, and the intricate plotting that became characteristic of Chandler's writing. In The Red Wind, Philip Marlowe finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue and murder in the city of Los Angeles. The narrative unfolds as Marlowe encounters a mysterious woman who seeks his help in finding a man named Crystal Kingsby. As the detective delves into the case, he becomes ensnared in a complex plot involving blackmail, deception, and, of course, the classic hardboiled elements that Chandler is renowned for.

The title The Red Wind refers to a hot and dry wind that blows through the Los Angeles area during certain weather conditions, creating a tense and atmospheric backdrop for the story. Chandler skillfully weaves this environmental element into the narrative, contributing to the overall mood of the piece. The Red Wind is appreciated not only for its contribution to the detective fiction genre but also for its role in establishing Chandler as a master of the hardboiled style. The story showcases his ability to craft compelling characters, intricate plots, and a distinctive narrative voice that would define his later and more extensive works.

Raymond Chandler quotes

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."
— The Simple Art of Murder

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have."
- In a letter to his editor regarding a proofreader that had changed Chandler's split infinitives

Source and additional information: Raymond Chandler

Leather Bound Treasure Books