Mandarin's Jade and Other Stories

by Raymond Chandler, Elliott Gould (Performer)

Mandarin's Jade, The Man Who Liked Dogs, and Try the Girl are three of Raymond Chandler's early mystery stories that set the groundwork for the creation of the Philip Marlowe character. His fast-paced style has become the hallmark of American mystery at its best. 4 cassettes.

Genres: Noir, Mystery, Fiction, The United States Of America, Crime, Short Stories, Classics

Audio CD

First published January 1, 1964

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

[Razvan Banciu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, we have a detective, young and handsome enough to be a nice person, but not too smart, as a lot of bad guys knock him. After that, we take a beautiful girl ( being only pretty is sometimes of not much use...) with some existential problems, one or two tough guys, usually two cops ( the good one and the bad one) and, unfortunately, a corpse or two. Everybody has a gun and uses it, everybody is a heavy drinker and smoker, almost everyone is in love with a girl. Finally, the detective is solving the case and takes, or takes not, the girl home...

PS: Mandarin's Jade is not the best story from these ones. Chaotic and somehow senseless, quite on the contrary. But the detective takes the girl...

[Chiara Nontalini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi piace l'hard boiled, qui un po' tutto affrettato e poco chiaro; un sacco di botte in testa e drink, comunque, il metodo Marlowe è tra i miei preferiti.

[Paolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uccide con la semplicitá con cui beve scotch. È circondato da dark-lady che lo vogliono seppellire. Elementi narrativi che ruotano attorno a Jhon Dalmas, il protagonista di questo racconto di Chandler. Se decidete di portare a termine questa lettura vi conviene acquistare un giubbotto antiproiettile. Alla prossima!

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Three fairly straightforward, engaging crime detective short stories, titled, ‘Mandarin’s Jade’, ‘Try the Girl’, and ‘The Man who Liked Dogs’, each approximately 60 pages, were all written before the author’s first novel, ‘The Big Sleep’ (1939). Two of the stories were published in 1937 and one in 1936.

[Mojtaba R · Rating 3 out of 5]

مطابق با روایت کتاب، دالماس، کارآگاه خصوصی است که به کاستلاماره می رود تا مأموریتی را که دوستش برایش ردیف کرده است، انجام دهد و پولی به جیب بزند. او مدتهاست که جیبش خالی شده و بدش نمی آید مقداری وضع مالی‌اش را سر و سامان بدهد. بدین ترتیب به خانه لیندی پال می رود و پس از فهمیدن ماجرای سرقت گردنبند و اینکه دزدان برای پس دادنش 10 هزار دلار مطالبه کرده اند، از لیندی 50 دلار پیش پرداخت می خواهد. او نسبت به لیندی پال هم ظنین است و با او رفتار خوبی برقرار نمی کند. کارآگاه از لیندی می خواهد پول ها را علامتگذاری کند تا پلیس ها بتوانند سارقان را ردیابی کنند. آنها وقتی به محل قرار رسیدند، کارآگاه مضروب و لیندی پال کشته شد. در این‌جا، کشمکش داستان به نقطه اوج خودش می‌رسد. کارآگاه دالماس وقتی به هوش آمد، با دختری به نام کارول پراید مواجه شد. آنها پس از یک مشاجره با هم دوست می شوند. کارول پراید، خبرنگار است و برای روزنامه کار می کند. کارآگاه در جریان درگیری و مباحثه با کارول پراید به دو اسم بر می خورد: لولید و سوکسیان غیب گو. پلیس ها لولید را دستگیر کردند و دالماس با سوکسیان قرار گذاشت و از طریق او به سرکرده سارقان یعنی موس دسترسی پیدا کرد. دالماس آنجا نیز مضروب شد و البته سوکسیان نیز ناخودآگاه با شلیک گلوله او کشته شد. کارول پارول در گفتگوی بعدی به دالماس گفت که گردنبند متعلق به زنی به اسم پرندر گست می باشد که هدیه شوهرش است. پرندر گست زن هرزه ای است که ظاهراً با این سارقان در ارتباط بوده است. نهایتاً دالماس با تعقیب سارقان و سرنخ ها با موس مواجه می شود و طی درگیری همه سارقان کشته می شوند و دالماس به رابطه سارقان با پرندر گست پی می برد. پرندر وقتی متوجه می شود که در خطر است، سعی می کند تا از اسلحه اش استفاده کند، اما شوهرش سر می رسد و با دادن یک میلیون دلار به دالماس از او می خواهد تا سکوت کند و پرونده را مختومه اعلام کند و با پلیس در این زمینه صحبتی نکند. دالماس و کارول پول را می گیرند و از خانه بیرون می آیند و این‌چنین داستان در بی‌تعادلی محض به پایان می‌رسد.

[Greg Sheppard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable in doses. But so much more ramshackle and But it's not Marlowe and all the ones who aren't Marlowe aren't as good. They might as well be interchangeable. They are all crasser, all a bit less interesting but more willing to get in a fight etc. And it gets samey.

You could probably adapt these into good TV episodes or even films if you gave the detectives more distinction and expanded out some of the characters.

[Christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I continue to enjoy these stories. I like his metaphors.

[Paolo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Investigatore privato duro e solitario, perennemente al verde, non lascia mai sigarette e whisky indagando tra strampalati sensitivi e ricche clienti. Il racconto non sempre risulta coinvolgente, nonostante includa tutti gli ingredienti essenziali dell'hard boiled, di cui Raymond Chandler è maestro.

[Siegfried Gony]

Non, mais c'est bien, mais je n'ai pas retrouvé le souffle épique du Chandler du Faucon maltais...

[Dan K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Original versions of 3 stories that got cannibalized by Chandler for "Farewell My Lovely"; the revised version is definitely better.

[Wolfe Tone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice short story, which later formed a base for Farewell my lovely, one of Chandler's best novels, and the great movie Murder, my dear.