The Collected Raymond Chandler

by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler is one of the most significant mystery authors in the history of the genre, helping to create hard-boiled detective fiction, and giving readers the iconic Philip Marlowe. This collection contains all 25 of his short stories, including classics such as The Curtain and The King in Yellow, as well as all seven of his novels, including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye.

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Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Anthologies

3763 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

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."

Reviews

[Brian Donald William Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the entire 2000 page omnibus and discovered a quite good writer. His attention to detail is exceptional and each of his novels, or novellas, contain reasonable mystery stories though some are a little stretched for logic. His main weakness is the characters of women whom he doesn't seem to understand. All of them are basically cut from the same mold: beautiful, tough, rich, sexual... all good, but all the same except perhaps for hair colour. He really is an early formula writer like so many of today and obviously succeeded in attracting fans. I would recommend this, but not all at once.

[F.A. Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a huge book. It contains all seven of this seminal writer's novels--and that's less than half the book! The rest of it is filled with his complete stories, novelettes, and novellas. An excellent value.

[Phillip Dunham · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is interesting to see him work out the same scenes in short stories and again in his novels.

[Thomas A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just Wow

I’m an avid reader of 67 but I had never read any of Raymond Chandler’s stuff. This stuff is wonderful, gritty and realistic. It does need some editing with spelling and punctuation.

[Margaret Crawford · Rating 3 out of 5]

a bit too much to read all through at once.

Raymond Chandler writes well but his unrelenting cynicism gets a bit much to take. His twists become predictable and he reuses his most effective descriptions and figures of speech. A book to dip into when in the mood.

[Peter C Bianchi Jr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super

Great compelling style, complicated plots that tie together and a lesson on style as there are in this collection several variations of the same story.

[kat]

read for my pulp fiction class

[Jane Ferketic]

Recommended by Nora ephron