Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories

by Raymond Chandler, Sergio Altieri (Translator)

Collection of Chandler's short stories previously printed in Dime Detective, Black Mask, and The Saturday Evening Post in the 1930s. Stories are "Red Wind," "Blackmailers Don't Shoot," "I'll Be Waiting," "Goldfish," and "Guns at Cyrano's."

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Short Stories, Noir, Crime, Audiobook, Detective

253 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1938

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

[Ayz · Rating 5 out of 5]

in a desert of safe vanilla pop culture — noir was really the first genre to appear and recognize the domination, as well as illusion, of the matrix or the north-american dream, or whatever you want to call our simulation of worker bee societies, immoral politics and the never-ending 9-5 grind of a beast system that the entire world lives under.

to me noir was about the futility of trying to escape your lot in life, and how you were sold one bill of goods in school and by culture, only to be handed a wholly different and lesser hand. the worst part being that you weren’t likely to realize this until you were too old, trusted society and history one too many times, and had too many life-earned traumas, scars and bruises to give a damn anymore.

noir subverted and revealed the seedy truth behind the north-american dream state.

that despite what the advertisements, movies and pop songs promised you, it was not ever meant for you. there was no woman waiting to love you forever no-matter-what, and no man that would understand your troubles till-the-end-of-time. it was about heartache leading to opened eyes, and that one last shot at an honourable life, or even death. that one last score that would allow you to leave the matrix for good.

but just like in the desert, most mirages fade from view the closer you get to them — and noir got real close. to the hollywood-manufactured idealism of society. looking right through the facade and in turn right through us.

in a way, noir was a mirage itself.

unable to sustain itself while scratching at the seams of the simulation, without ever actually breaking through to the other side. it revealed, however, to those that understood, the futility of following your culturally indoctrinated dreams.

there only awaited more infinite desert at the end of their rainbow, noir tried to warn you.

so look inwards instead.

alright, i know this was supposed to be a red wind review, but it turned into something completely unrelated and maybe better.

oh well, another desert mirage.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dame loses her pearls. Said dame saves a detective. Said detective tries to recover those pearls for her.

Then a little dude ends up dead. A slightly odd couple from West LA gets roped in. An investigating copper gets duped and then gets sore about it. And that's not all! I mean, geez louise, there's a lot going on for such a short story.

Red Wind is a fast talkin', fast movin' street-level crime thriller from Raymond Chandler that only comes up short due to it being so dang short. Seriously, this story could use a few more pages to breathe a bit more.

[Razvan Banciu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps one of the saddest Chandler stories, not necessarily by itself.
We can understand, at least to a point, people blackmailing and even killing for a lace of pearls, but these being fake and being given as a present to a beloved one maybe it's too much...

[Jack Heath · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars. A good one. 'Red Wind' is one of four stories by Chandler published as a collection in 1950 under the title 'Trouble is My Business.' The novella first came out in the pulp mystery magazine, 'Dime Detective,' in 1938 with John Dalmas in the lead. With the popularity of the author's novels featuring private detective Philip Marlowe, he changed most of the leads to Marlowe in re-publication. This one's not as captivating as the other three, but it does meet the action quota of a Marlowe story! Lots of it. There are two occasions in the 52 pages where our favourite shamus is certain a gun pulled on him at close range is going to be fired. In one day! It all starts with Marlowe wandering down the street to a recently-opened bar near the Berglund Apartments where he lives. An innocent beer? For Marlowe yes, but not for Waldo, a guy who rushed in asking if anyone has seen a lady in a bolero jacket. The only patron in the bar other than Marlowe wished Waldo, "So long," and shot him! Quite an opening chapter! Get set for a little extra, but unappreciated, police brutality as compared to most Marlowe stories. (Jul2020/Jul2024)

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

253 pages, a novella.

Once this story gets going, you know it's the real thing. Early Chandler, but pure and clean. Great complex plot, good pacing, and the prose mostly smooth and effortless. Wonderful.

Two beautiful quotes, indisputably Chandler:

The old Levantine had a shop on Melrose, a junk shop with everything in the window from a folding baby carriage to a French horn, from a mother-of-pearl lorgnette in a faded plush case to one of those .44 Special Single Action six-shooters they still make for Western peace officers whose grandfathers were tough.

and

I went out of the bar without looking back at her, got into my car and drove west on Sunset and down all the way to the Coast Highway. Everywhere along the way gardens were full of withered and blackened leaves and flowers which the hot wind had burned.

But the ocean looked cool and languid and just the same as ever. I drove on almost to Malibu and then parked and went and sat on a big rock that was inside somebody’s wire fence. It was about half-tide and coming in. The air smelled of kelp.

[Христо Блажев · Rating 4 out of 5]

Трима детективи на Чандлър раздават справедливост: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/z...

Ей, голям кеф на дърти (не чак толкова!) го́дини да откриваш Реймънд Чандлър :) На младини хич не си падах по кримки, само фантастика и приключенски четях, та сега имам да наваксвам много. В сборника “Зъл вятър” са събрани седем еднотипни, но много кървави и забавни новели, писани между 1935 и 1939 г. Цели трима детективи се подвизават из тях: Кармади, Джон Далмас и Филип Марлоу, но разлика между тях няма, и на задната корица е посочено, че споделят една самоличност.

Издателство "Изток-Запад"
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/z...

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK (Novella) 199 (of 250)
I chose to focus on "Red Wind" in this collection. When Chandler writes, "His gun raked the side of my face but it didn't go off. He was already limp," Chandler isn't talking about a gun, no way, no how. So we know instantly we're in a Chandler work.
HOOK= 2 stars: In the grand tradition of "It was a dark and stormy night," opening, Chandler opts for "There was a desert wind blowing that night." "Writing 101": Never open a story with a weather report. That said, the story I'm reviewing is titled "Red Wind", so Chandler gets a pass, for a 2-star hook.
PACE=1 star. So much happens so fast I didn't understand the story. At all. But sometimes, I don't think Chandler bothers much with...
PLOT=2: Milady wants her stolen pearls back! "Allright, tell me about the pearls. We have had a murder and a mystery woman and a mad killer and a heroic rescue and a police detective framed into make a false report. Now we will have pearls. All right - feed it to me." Feed him the pearls?
Isn't this getting a little bit...ummm...homoerotic? YES! But just in time, "The wind was still blowing, oven hot..." Now for page 2.
CHARACTERS=3: I've lived in Los Angeles. Yes, I know about the red wind. Of the 15 permanent addresses I've lived, the only place in which candlesticks have actually melted was in L.A. (very few residences have, or need, air-conditioning, at least back in the 80s and 90s. Then there is Waldo, who had "described the girl's clothes in a way the ordinary man wouldn't know how to describe them...I might have said blue dress or even blue silk dress, but never blue crepe silk dress." You just can't help yourself, Chandler, you gotta get in phrases about "men who aren't ordinary." It was only a matter of pages. But I loved this: "After a while two men came in with a basket. Lew Petrolle was still polishing his glass and talking to the short dark dick." Nary another word about that darn basket and I'm not really sure if the short dark dick is a person. Oh, and back to Waldo, "They didn't know who Waldo was yet either". Oh, and what was it Lew was polishing? Yep, homoerotic.
ATMOSPHERE/PLACE =4: "I stopped, with a glass in each hand, and said: 'Maybe this hot wind has got you crazy too. I'm a private detective. I'll prove it if you let me'." Perhaps carrying 2 glasses is proof enough, one supposes? And about "a gun in her hand": "It was a small automatic with a pearl grip. It jumped up at me..." One doesn't read Chandler for plot. It's all style and sometimes it just doesn't make sense. But it's Chandler, particularly heavy here with phallic references.
SUMMARY= The answers, my friend, are blowin' in the red hot wind and out of Chandler's grasp, as plot doesn't much matter. 2.4 overall.

[LindaH · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Red Wind" is the title of a short story written by Raymond Chandler. Raymond Chandler is considered by some the father of hard-boiled crime fiction, and "Red Wind" is supposed to be the best of his short stories. This is why I grabbed the audiobook, Red Wind, narrated by Elliott Gould, on Audible.com, which is not the story collection pictured in GR's version listed above. Anyway...

Chandler's P.I. isn't new to me. He's the Humphrey Bogart character, Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep), who can size up a dame as fast as he can bring down a gunman. "Red Wind" was first published in 1938, in the crime fiction magazine, Black Mask. This is important to me because 1) I'm trying to get a sense of the origins of my favorite genre--mystery, and 2) my dad always had a stack of those pulp crime fiction magazines by his recliner in the early fifties. No doubt he had been reading them in the late thirties when he started working as an investigator (in Marlowe's city, L.A.!).

My next job is to find out how detectives and crimes, as well as eggs, can be "hard-boiled".

[Heather Culley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dunno, California seems really bleak and depressing for being a fantasy land full of dreams and illusions. I guess that’s about right.

[Simone Caffarini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Che Chandler sia un maestro indiscusso del genere lo sapevo già, ma finora avevo sempre trascurato i suoi racconti. Così ho aperto questa raccolta. Ogni volta che ne terminavo uno, mi dicevo: non si può fare meglio di così. E poi il racconto successivo mi smentiva. A volte sbagliarsi è piacevole - e questo vale anche per le trame dei suoi racconti, che ti portano su una falsa pista e ti fanno girare a vuoto, per poi sorprenderti con un colpo di coda finale. Piccoli giocattoli a molla, architettati alla perfezione. Sì, ho detto perfezione, perché qui si tratta di Chandler, ragazzi.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I prefer his novels to his stories, but with Chandler you always get delicious stuff like this: “She wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t even pretty, but she looked as if things would happen where she was.”

[Maria Thomarey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[Žydrūnas Jonušas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Žanro klasika.
Įvykiai seka vienas kitą, visos smulkmenos svarbios, pasakojimas be jokių lia-lia. Griežtai, kapotai ir nenuobodžiai.
Kas liečia patį leidimą, tai įdomus variantas: knyga vos 135psl., dvi istorijos ir išspausdintos kokiu 16-u šriftu, kietas viršelis. Toks kaip ir labiau proginis ar suvenyrinis leidimas (kaip suprantu ir visa serija), kuriame nesistengta sutalpinti kuo daugiau teksto :)
Pats stilius labai siejasi su juoduoju romanu, o Chandler'is net ir draugavo su James M. Cain'u ("Laiškanešys skambina du kartus").
Labai rekomenduoju visiems, norintiems pabandyti kažko kito, kažko nenusibodusio.
O dar ta XXa. pr. Amerika... :)

[Bap · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Red Wind: Very pulpy. Very LA. A murder or two, a detective, some clumsy cops and a dame. Chandler once described LA as a "big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup." His books a hard broiled as well with not a lot of depth but fun.

[Sandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chandler è sempre Chandler!
Non è il migliore dei libri di Chandler (che secondo me è "Il lungo addio") ma è pur sembre una piacevolissima lettura.
Ed ogni tanto ci trovate anche qualche meravigliosa battuta tipiche di Chandler.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phillip Marlowe enters a local neighborhood bar for a cold beer, and relief from the Santa Anna winds, and finds himself involved in murder, blackmail, missing pearls, a dirty cop, and a damsel in distress. Hard boiled pulp fiction at every turn of the page.

[Glass River]

Not enough is known about Chandler’s life; not a single letter survives from the first thirty years of it. He has always been barren territory for biographers. But Chandler’s route into hardboiled fiction – of which he is the Shakespeare – is reasonably well chronicled, and fascinating.
For reasons known only to himself, Chandler – who had been a high-earning oil-company executive before losing his job in the Depression – decided, at close on forty-five years of age, to give up drink (he was acutely alcoholic) and become a professional writer. He cocooned himself in cheap lodgings with his wife Cissy – a woman old enough to be his mother – he married her not long after his mother’s death, who seems, nobly, to have gone along with their sudden change in circumstances. For several years Chandler imposed a gruelling writer’s apprenticeship on himself. He chose crime writing, he said, because it was ‘honest’. Poverty, too, was ‘purifying’. Chandler had set his sights on Black Mask – the magazine which had launched Dashiell Hammett. It pioneered in its pages ‘hardboiled’ detective fiction: a classier product than was purveyed in the pulps, and a tougher one than was produced by British ‘tea-cosy’ crime writers. Chandler realised there was space in this new crime-fiction genre to establish a whole other style. Over the latter years of the 1930s he created a niche for himself as a regular contributor to Black Mask, cultivating a specialism in the Los Angeles-based ‘private eye’ story. What Chandler perfected was ‘voice’. His favoured narrative mode is autobiographical – the tone is laconic, wisecracking, seen-it-all, world-weary. Above all, he aimed at what he called ‘cadence’ – a quality which American crime writing sadly lacked.
The great novels are all well known. Less visited are his early trial runs perfecting the ‘voice’ – tuning it as a musician tunes his instrument before an important performance. Notable among these exercises is the long short story ‘Red Wind’, which centres on private investigator John Dalmas (who would eventually mutate into Philip Marlowe). It’s the first Chandler I ever read (as a schoolboy), in its Penguin green livery. On the strength of it I went out and splurged 16/- on the Hamish Hamilton Marlowe quartet. It’s looking down on me, battered by time and re-readings, at this moment.
‘Red Wind’ opens with a paragraph of pure Chandlerian ‘cadence’:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
This overture leads into a Nighthawks-esque scene in an LA bar (a favourite opening in Chandler narratives). Dalmas, who has an apartment nearby, has drifted in for a nightcap. The bar is empty, apart from a drunk who is sitting sodden in the corner, a pile of dimes in front of him (a ‘shot’ only cost a quarter, twenty-five cents, in those days). It emerges that the drunk is no drunk but a contract killer, waiting patiently for his prey. That prey is the customer who has just walked through the door. He gets two expertly directed .22 rounds to the chest and falls to the floor. ‘He might have been poured concrete for all the fuss he made,’ Dalmas comments, laconically. As is usual with Chandler, the plot thereafter goes haywire. Famously, he himself never understood what was happening in his narratives. ‘Who knows?’ was his customary riddling response when asked about some peculiarly baffling twist. Dalmas, as the formula requires, cracks the case (and a few heads in the process). But no one reads Chandler for the story – it’s the voice, stupid.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early collection of Raymond Chandler short stories.

Mystery Review: Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories is a seemingly random selection of five of Raymond Chandler's short detective stories. None feature Philip Marlowe. The two best stories, "Goldfish" (1936) and "Red Wind" (1938), later reappeared in Trouble is My Business with their protagonists (Ted Carmady and John Dalmas, respectively) magically transformed into Philip Marlowe. They're also the only two stories here written in the first person, as were all the Marlowe stories. Two others, "Guns at Cyrano's" (1936) and "I'll Be Waiting" (1939) were subsequently collected in The Simple Art of Murder. The fifth story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (1933) can be found in Collected Stories. The elegiac "I'll Be Waiting" is the only piece in Red Wind that has the feel and tone of a short story, and appropriately it was first published in the Saturday Evening Post. The other four originally appeared in Black Mask or Dime Detective and read more like short novels. The reader can easily envision Chandler adding subplots, red herrings, and encounters with colorful characters to make them full length books. "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" was Chandler's first published work, which took him six months to write. The plot is is somewhat chaotic as the author focuses on mean streets verisimilitude and creating a rounded and compelling main character. Tellingly, it features a detective named "Mallory," who is tougher than tough and oft-surrounded by bullet-riddled bodies. It also has some of the Chandler verve: after being shot Mallory's "right leg felt like the plagues of Egypt." I don't know if this collection can still be found (my copy is from 1946), but Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories contains five entertaining tales as well as a bit of history. [4★]

[Mosco · Rating 3 out of 5]

e pensare che a me Chandler di solito piace proprio!
Raccolta di 6 racconti senza Marlowe e uno con. Il primo mi è piaciuto, mi stavo leccando i baffi quando ho preso sonno sul secondo e sul terzo, arruffati e noiosetti. (possibile? Possibile!) Buono il quarto, ora sono al quinto. Che finora è così così.
Finito. Si sente che sono racconti scritti in epoche diverse, alcuni riusciti meglio altri peggio. 3 stelle perché Chandler è Chandler, e senza lui il mondo sarebbe peggiore ;)
Però, azzarola, si può scrivere (o tradurre, sa il diavolo) 69 volte ghigno sogghigno o sghignazzo? (sono precisa, le ho fatte contare dal kindle) Anche quando, ci metto su i cabasisi, il protagonista tutto faceva fuor che sghignazzare.

[itchy · Rating 3 out of 5]

spelling:
p11: It jumped up at me and here eyes were full of horror.

ocr:
p64: Mallory said thoughtfully: "Ten grand does it nicely, Miss Farr."
Rhonda Fair was very beautiful.
- It's Farr and Fair all throughout. And I can't find any article regarding this story (Blackmailers Don't Shoot) so I have no idea which is correct.

p172: I sat still for a moment, with the empty glass at my finger's , ends, gathering my strength.

cement:
p251: Carmady went up three cement steps and tried the door.

Funny thing: my Android reader kept sliding me back several pages on app restart while my Windows reader was fine. It took me a while before I realized that I was reading the same chapter over and over. I did realize that the scene I was reading felt repeated but I thought it was deliberate.

[sheryne!! · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lu trois fois pourtant je ne suis toujours pas sure d’avoir compris pourquoi le gars du début meurt

[Sakshi Pandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 stars for red wind.
Rest are nope.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

No Philip Marlowe, but still classic Chandler, well suited to the short story. Concentrated doses of sordidness, sadism, and shifty cops.

[Rick Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Major characters:
Waldo / Joseph Coates / A. B. Hummel, the Barsaly chauffeur
Lew Petrolle, bartender
Frank Barsaly, wealthy engineer
Lola Barsaly, his wife
Al Tessilore, "the drunk"
Leon Valesanos, a croupier
Eugénie Kolchenko, the kept Russian woman
Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator
Sam Copernick, "bad cop" police detective
--- Ybarra, "good cop" police detective

Locale: Los Angeles, California

Synopsis: The hot, dry Santa Ana "red winds" are blowing. Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is having a drink in the bar across from his apartment house, and talking with 'young kid' bartender Lew Petrolle. A man comes in looking for a lady, who he describes precisely. As he leaves, a "drunk" (Al Tessillore) at the bar shoots him dead, calling him "Waldo".

After the authorities come, Marlowe returns to his apartment house and encounters a woman matching Waldo's description, Lola Barsaly. She identifies Waldo as Joseph Coates, who had stolen her expensive string of pearls. She gets Marlowe to enter Coates' apartment to retrieve the pearls - instead he finds a dead man, croupier Leon Valesanos, hanging from the Murphy bed frame. Marlowe takes his Valensano's keys and locates his car outside, and goes to a found address to find Frank Barsaly with his kept Russian woman, Eugénie Kolchenko. Barsaly reveals the motives while holding a gun on Marlowe.

Marlowe works out a tough deal with police detectives Sam Copernick and --- Ybarra to recover the pearls, protect their sources, and close the case.

Review: This is the story with famous opening line describing the hot, airless desert night: "On nights like that ... meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen." The reader will be reaching for the A/C as Chandler's setting is described.

The short story format is perfect for the hard-boiled genre. The reader gets beat up along with the characters in longer outings. There are quite a few characters in this short work, and their relationships are not always clear until late in the tale. The wistful ending is a bit of a surprise. One loose end: where did the real pearls go?

[Malcolm Noble · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a great Chandler fan since my teenage and have several bookcases of the different titles and edition. However, if I am to choose just one to list here, it has to be Red Wind. A super title story supported by other vg ones. Found my first copy at a bootfair in 1982 ... very ragged cloth, but looks quite good now as I've had it rebound in leather. Subsequently came across other copies of the first edition. Not difficult to find and well worth the effort. Don't settle for recent reprints. Would also point you to the 1940s radio play of Red Wind, which is generally available and of quite good reproduction.

Here is a link to my full review on You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztx5ks...

[Averin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually, I read this in high school and do not remember where. I re-read it last year to support a paper for English that I had to write on my own haiku. Since the poem was about the Santa Anas (the Red Wind) of my native Los Angeles and it's been a few years since I went home, I googled it and found it online here. Try it, not even geography professors can resist quoting from Red Wind. "Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife …"

It's a perfect Philip Marlowe story, only seven chapters long with all the world-weary cynicism you expect from Chandler. And it helped me get an A from my professor.

[Kem White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Raymond Chandler... a unique style in American writing. And while I didn't actually read this particular volume, I did read all 5 of this book's stories in my Library of America edition of Chandler's "Early Years". While "Red Wind" has the best opening paragraph you'll ever read in a short story, the story itself wasn't the best of the five. "Guns at Cyrano's" and "Goldfish," especially, are better. This latter story has a Hitchcock flavor to it. "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" is pretty good as well. I love Chandler and his hard-boiled gumshoe vernacular. The stories are violent and entertaining. I definitely like hearing about California of the '30s. If you like crime and action, then this book is recommended. But read them just to experience Raymond Chandler.

[James Clinton Slusher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Red Wind" is a wonderful story, filled with incredible dialogue, vivid description and memorable characters. It's definitely from that detective noire genre and the language will take you back to the '40s & '50s, but it never feels dated to me. Just tough, gentle and moody, all at the same time. This is the third time I've read it. I appreciate it anew, and get something new out of it, every time. Thanks to Richard Battin for turning me on to it in the first place.

[Mark Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of The Midnight Raymond Chandler. I just finished "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", Chandler's first published story, and you can definitely see his progress. There are enough of the stock private eye story elements in "Red Wind" that magazine readers probably expected at the time. However, the plot is clearer and the writing is smoother. His novels have more breathing room, which is a plus. But over all, this is really good stuff!

[Sundry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raymond Chandler read by Eliot Gould. Wonderful! Sometimes I laughed out loud with sheer pleasure at the way Chandler uses the language.