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The Midnight Raymond Chandler
Little seen novellas, including The Long Goodbye.
734 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1971
3 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Chandler
449 books5,612 followersRaymond 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."
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."
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 17, 2025
Over thirty years ago, this book (along with The Raymond Chandler Omnibus) was my introduction to Chandler’s unique noir Los Angeles landscape and his fascinating prose that turned pulp genre stories into a legitimate art form. Most of these stories are tales of Chandler’s greatest creation, the private eye who became synonymous with his writing, the hard bitten but sadly sensitive Philip Marlowe. Two of these tale are absolute classics of the noir genre — his novel The Long Goodbye and novella Red Wind. Also here are his short novel The Little Sister, the novella Trouble Is My Business, and Chandler’s essay on the crime genre The Simple Art of Murder. I have reviewed all of these elsewhere on Goodreads, and will say no more about them here other than they are excellent and you should read them one and all.
I revisited The Midnight Raymond Chandler for the sake of two stories that I’ve only found in this collection — Blackmailers Don’t Shoot, and The Pencil. These were Chandler’s first and last stories written, respectively.
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot
This was the first story Chandler published (Black Mask, 1933). Many of the traits Chandler would become known for are already evident here. There’s the noir Los Angeles landscape full of corrupt and cynical cops, ruthless gangsters, and Hollywood types both cynical and ruthless. There’s also a nearly unintelligible plot and too many bodies piling up too fast to be readily believable. Chandler’s hard boiled dialogue is here, though not yet perfected fully into his clever and evocative word stylings. Of course, there’s blackmail, kidnapping, double crossing, murder, and official police nefariousness. The antihero here is a dick named Mallory, who seems like a not yet perfected Marlowe. Unlike the Marlowe stories, this one is not told in first person. Mallory seems coarser than Marlowe, with fewer scruples and less inner life, but in him you can see the shadow of what was to come.
This is just a middling story at best, but of interest to see the beginnings of a legend.
3 ⭐️
The Pencil
”I heard you leveled with customers, Marlowe.”
“That’s why I stay poor.”
This story bookends the previous one, as it was Chandler’s final story, first appearing in London’s Daily Mail in 1959, shortly after his death.
This is a well oiled story — the product of a mature master’s skill. Chandler’s powers of description and flair for dialogue are at peak levels. He even presents a simplified plot, and only one certain murder is involved.
Here Marlowe takes a job from a gangster trying to break away from the Outfit, but has been “penciled” — marked for death by the mob. He wants Marlowe to help him escape town and lose the assassins sent after him.
Marlowe pulls off the job, and is paid well for his services, but this being Marlowe, of course there is a twist to complicate things.
This is a smooth, well told story, rich in description, atmosphere, and dialogue. Not bad for a swan song story.
4 1/2 ⭐️
I revisited The Midnight Raymond Chandler for the sake of two stories that I’ve only found in this collection — Blackmailers Don’t Shoot, and The Pencil. These were Chandler’s first and last stories written, respectively.
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot
This was the first story Chandler published (Black Mask, 1933). Many of the traits Chandler would become known for are already evident here. There’s the noir Los Angeles landscape full of corrupt and cynical cops, ruthless gangsters, and Hollywood types both cynical and ruthless. There’s also a nearly unintelligible plot and too many bodies piling up too fast to be readily believable. Chandler’s hard boiled dialogue is here, though not yet perfected fully into his clever and evocative word stylings. Of course, there’s blackmail, kidnapping, double crossing, murder, and official police nefariousness. The antihero here is a dick named Mallory, who seems like a not yet perfected Marlowe. Unlike the Marlowe stories, this one is not told in first person. Mallory seems coarser than Marlowe, with fewer scruples and less inner life, but in him you can see the shadow of what was to come.
This is just a middling story at best, but of interest to see the beginnings of a legend.
3 ⭐️
The Pencil
”I heard you leveled with customers, Marlowe.”
“That’s why I stay poor.”
This story bookends the previous one, as it was Chandler’s final story, first appearing in London’s Daily Mail in 1959, shortly after his death.
This is a well oiled story — the product of a mature master’s skill. Chandler’s powers of description and flair for dialogue are at peak levels. He even presents a simplified plot, and only one certain murder is involved.
Here Marlowe takes a job from a gangster trying to break away from the Outfit, but has been “penciled” — marked for death by the mob. He wants Marlowe to help him escape town and lose the assassins sent after him.
Marlowe pulls off the job, and is paid well for his services, but this being Marlowe, of course there is a twist to complicate things.
This is a smooth, well told story, rich in description, atmosphere, and dialogue. Not bad for a swan song story.
4 1/2 ⭐️
October 29, 2010
This omnibus contains Chandler's greatest works, and a spattering of wonderful novellas that are impossible to find anywhere else.
Although not known for his writing style, but more for the arc of his stories, I'm convinced there is no greater writer of human dialogue in the history of literature than Raymond Chandler.
His writing is so compulsively witty, desert dry and often terrifyingly heart-breaking that you can't help but fall in love with his characters and the world he wrote about, even if you can't always recall the stories themselves.
But the experience of reading Chandler is something you'll never have reading anyone else, and what an amazing experience it is. One of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, period.
Included novels: The Long Goodbye, Red Wind, Little Sister, Trouble is My Business + 3 novellas.
Although not known for his writing style, but more for the arc of his stories, I'm convinced there is no greater writer of human dialogue in the history of literature than Raymond Chandler.
His writing is so compulsively witty, desert dry and often terrifyingly heart-breaking that you can't help but fall in love with his characters and the world he wrote about, even if you can't always recall the stories themselves.
But the experience of reading Chandler is something you'll never have reading anyone else, and what an amazing experience it is. One of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, period.
Included novels: The Long Goodbye, Red Wind, Little Sister, Trouble is My Business + 3 novellas.
Want to read
December 9, 2025Confession time - I skipped "The Pencil", because it was the shortest, before I had to return this to the library. But I've read the others here in or in audiobook. It's fun to see how Chandler progressed as a writer from his first published story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot." This is great stuff over all!
August 15, 2011
Good reading, at any age. I'll read it again next year and enjoy it just as much.
January 27, 2018
I have read every story in this book several times over , I loved the long goodbye and red wind the most...probably red wind is my favorite, I have traveled all my life because of the work I do, I know Southern California pretty well and I remember when I was living in Glendale when the Santa Anna's would blow out of the Mojave desert it was like a 20 mph blast furnace you could wake up at 3 am with 100 degrees blowing take a thick terry cloth towel out of a bathtub soaking wet hang it out on the clothesline outback within five minutes it was bone dry...the first time I ever saw the LA basin coming over the grapevine out of Bakersfield all I could think of was how beautiful this place once was a hundred years ago from that point on you could drive all the way to the mexican border and suburbia never ended, much of Chandler's tone regarding Los Angeles is true there are a lot of good hardworking people in LA but the petrol soaked mob, the movie empire with Vegas just down the road offering the illusion of escape permeates life,everywhere you go it's always in the background ....look at what California has become now....it is very sad, the melancholy and hard bleakness of detective novels is based in truth.... a longing for strength and nobility against the whelming torrent of corruption, the illusory hope of ever truly seeing this grows more dim as months and years drift into history...it should be little wonder fiction is popular....fiction in many ways really isn't fiction...
July 8, 2007
Well, Chandler is Chandler so you know what to expect. Might be summarized as all the macho sentimentality of Hemingway without the disciplined style. In these early stories, he sometimes sounds like a parody of himself. On the other hand The Long Goodbye is sort of sweet.
Okay for bedtime reading.
Okay for bedtime reading.
April 6, 2014
I liked The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye, but I wasn't a fan of "Blackmailers Don't Shoot". Just the reason for a crime story wasn't believable. "The Pencil" was OK. Worth a read? Only if you're just getting into Chandler's early history.
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March 24, 2012Proper title is "The Midnight"
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews