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Raymond Chandler

Born

in Chicago, Illinois, The United States

July 23, 1888

Died

March 26, 1959

Genre

Hard Boiled, Mystery, Thriller

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Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Chandler had Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.

The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "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—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held." ...more

Combine Editions
Raymond Chandler’s books

Average rating: 4.01 · 385,839 ratings · 22,855 reviews · 449 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1) 3.94 avg rating — 167,741 ratings — published 1939 — 236 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6) 4.19 avg rating — 46,515 ratings — published 1953 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2) 4.09 avg rating — 42,640 ratings — published 1940 — 451 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4) 4.06 avg rating — 27,915 ratings — published 1943 — 171 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The High Window (Philip Marlowe, #3) 4.04 avg rating — 25,282 ratings — published 1942 — 285 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5) 3.98 avg rating — 18,759 ratings — published 1949 — 314 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Trouble Is My Business (Philip Marlowe, #8) 4.06 avg rating — 13,059 ratings — published 1950	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Playback (Philip Marlowe, #7) 3.80 avg rating — 11,042 ratings — published 1958 — 256 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Simple Art of Murder 4.13 avg rating — 6,265 ratings — published 1944 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler, Robert B. Parker 3.60 avg rating — 5,326 ratings — published 1989 — 124 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Raymond Chandler…

Series by Raymond Chandler

Philip Marlowe (8 books)
by

Raymond Chandler

4.02 avg rating — 360,051 ratings

Veteran book nerds will be familiar with this dilemma: You’re in the mood for a certain kind of book, but traditional genre and subgenre labels...

Polls

October 2016 New School Group Read

1952, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, 581 pages

34 votes, 22.1%

1979, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, 260 pages

32 votes, 20.8%

1996, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, 432 pages

16 votes, 10.4%

1984, Neuromancer by William Gibson, 271 pages

14 votes, 9.1%

1924, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, 706 pages

12 votes, 7.8%

1939, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, 231 pages

12 votes, 7.8%

1997, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, 432 pages

10 votes, 6.5%

1956, The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, 103 pages

9 votes, 5.8%

1990, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, 246 pages

8 votes, 5.2%

1950, A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, 359 pages

5 votes, 3.2%

1978, Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec, 581 pages

2 votes, 1.3%

154 total votes

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