What do you think?
Rate this book
Raymond Chandler: A BBC Radio Collection
They never came tougher than Marlowe, a cynical, world-weary, wise-cracking shamus whose honesty in a dishonest world sent him down the mean streets again and again in search of some kind of justice.
Ed Bishop stars as Philip Marlowe in these powerfully atmospheric BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of Raymond Chandler's novels.
The Big Sleep
General Sternwood's daughters came in both the colours of trouble - blonde and brunette - and they had all the usual vices. With four million dollars behind them, blackmail was only a matter of time. And blackmail can be murder.
The High Window
Linda Conquest was very tough, very kissable and very missing, along with one very valuable old coin. But soon Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead.
The Lady in the Lake
Blonde, beautiful and wild, Crystal Kingsley had never been the faithful little wife. But when she goes missing for a month, and then a woman’s body surfaces in an isolated mountain lake, murder-a-day Marlowe is back in business.
The Little Sister
Marlowe is on the case of a missing brother from a two-bit Kansas town, who had the embarrassing habit of knowing guys who finished up on the wrong end of an ice-pick. Until, that is, he did too.
The Long Goodbye
Terry Lennox seemed like a nice guy. Okay, he was a drunk but maybe that could happen to anyone with too much money, too much time and a wife who played the field in a big way. Trouble was, when she ended up dead, it wasn't money that got Lennox to Mexico. It was Marlowe.
Farewell My Lovely
At six feet five, Moose Malloy is a big man who looks about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food – and about as dangerous. His girl Velma disappeared eight years ago, and now he wants to find her.
Also included in a BBC Radio archive discussion, in which Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming discuss thrillers and talk about their respective heroes: Philip Marlowe and James Bond.
Originally broadcast between 1977 and 1988, these dramatisations also star Don Fellows and Robert Beatty. They were adapted by Bill Morrison and produced by John Tydeman.
These are archive dramatisations of the original novels published between 1939 and 1953, and the language used reflects some of the attitudes of those times.
Ed Bishop stars as Philip Marlowe in these powerfully atmospheric BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of Raymond Chandler's novels.
The Big Sleep
General Sternwood's daughters came in both the colours of trouble - blonde and brunette - and they had all the usual vices. With four million dollars behind them, blackmail was only a matter of time. And blackmail can be murder.
The High Window
Linda Conquest was very tough, very kissable and very missing, along with one very valuable old coin. But soon Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead.
The Lady in the Lake
Blonde, beautiful and wild, Crystal Kingsley had never been the faithful little wife. But when she goes missing for a month, and then a woman’s body surfaces in an isolated mountain lake, murder-a-day Marlowe is back in business.
The Little Sister
Marlowe is on the case of a missing brother from a two-bit Kansas town, who had the embarrassing habit of knowing guys who finished up on the wrong end of an ice-pick. Until, that is, he did too.
The Long Goodbye
Terry Lennox seemed like a nice guy. Okay, he was a drunk but maybe that could happen to anyone with too much money, too much time and a wife who played the field in a big way. Trouble was, when she ended up dead, it wasn't money that got Lennox to Mexico. It was Marlowe.
Farewell My Lovely
At six feet five, Moose Malloy is a big man who looks about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food – and about as dangerous. His girl Velma disappeared eight years ago, and now he wants to find her.
Also included in a BBC Radio archive discussion, in which Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming discuss thrillers and talk about their respective heroes: Philip Marlowe and James Bond.
Originally broadcast between 1977 and 1988, these dramatisations also star Don Fellows and Robert Beatty. They were adapted by Bill Morrison and produced by John Tydeman.
These are archive dramatisations of the original novels published between 1939 and 1953, and the language used reflects some of the attitudes of those times.
Audiobook
First published November 3, 2011
3 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Chandler
449 books5,603 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."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 29, 2017
The dramatizations of Raymond Chandler's novels were highly entertaining. There were predictable patterns in these mystery novels but the dialogue was golden- brash, descriptive but terse, and often downright ingenious. There was no BS about detective Philip Marlowe. I wish I could go around town talking like him...
April 11, 2021
Chandler is the ultimate noir author and this BBC radio drama maybe the ultimate way to absorb it. Chandler's prose leap off the page and the fine BBC actors make it come alive with wonderful restraint. In Marlow, Chander creates the ultimate moral American - a loner and individualist but one who can't leave an injustice unnoticed. These are an absolute treat and the ur text of American hard boiled crime.
March 21, 2019
Fun! BBC cast is great.
June 9, 2021
Perfection.
March 21, 2023
the only thing keeping these adaptations from 5 stars is the voice cast is small enough that the same actor playing multiple parts in each is very noticeable.
February 12, 2016
Classic Chandler
Toby Stephens as Philip Marlowe
1. The Big Sleep (5 February 2011)
Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - respectable sister with gambling addiction, younger sister with drink/drug problem and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures.
2. The Lady in the Lake (12 February 2011)
Derace Kingsley, a wealthy businessman, hires Marlowe to find his estranged wife Crystal. Kingsley fears that rich, reckless Crystal may have got herself into a scandal and the last place she was known to have been was a resort called Little Fawn Lake.
3. Farewell My Lovely (19 February 2011)
When Philip Marlowe sees a huge, loudly dressed man casually throwing a bouncer out onto the the pavement as he goes into a bar, he knows it's time to walk away, so he follows him inside. The big guy is Moose Molloy, recently released from an eight year prison sentence and now on the hunt for his old sweetheart, a red-haired nightclub singer named Velma Valento.
4. Playback (26 February 2011)
Marlowe is hired to tail the mysterious Betty Mayfield all the way to the seaside town of Esmerelda, without knowing why or the identity of his employer. It's not long before he realises that he's not the only one on the trail, and that he too is being watched.
5. The Long Goodbye (1 October 2011)
Outside a club on Sunset Boulevard Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship but everything changes when Lennox shows up late one night, asking for a favour.
6. The High Window (8 October 2011)
When rare gold coin is stolen from her collection, Mrs Murdoch hires private eye Philip Marlowe to find it. The tough matriarch is convinced about the identity of the thief, but Marlowe's own enquiries lead him elsewhere. He's soon caught in the crossfire of a family at war with itself.
7. The Little Sister (15 October 2011)
A small, neat girl walks into Philip Marlowe's office. Orfamay Quest is looking for her brother Orrin. She gives Marlowe twenty dollars and lots of moral disapproval. Marlowe takes the case and finds himself drawn into the glamorous world of the Hollywood film studios.
8. Poodle Springs (22 October 2011)
Fresh from his honeymoon with heiress Linda Loring, Philip Marlowe has set up shop in the upmarket Californian town of Poodle Springs. But the life of a kept man soon loses its charm, and when he's asked to find a gambler on the run from his debts, Marlowe can't resist.
June 24, 2019
Toby Stephens really gives Marlowe a new edge. Honestly when I first read Chandler I found him a bit difficult to digest. I guess knowing some of stories helped me to look past blatant sexism & focus on how cleverly Chandler constructs a story. The plot twists are great & you can see how Chandler has influenced many crime writers since. I just wished the female characters had more substance to them. Well rounded characters like in Christie's novels are just my kind of thing. This production gives the stories a new life to these classics.
November 8, 2022
Toby Stephens does as excellent job portraying Philip Marlowe in this series of eight stand alone dramas.
Audible track 1, Story 1, the Big Sleep. 4/10
Audible track 3, Story 2, Farewell My Lovely. 6/10
Audible track 5, story 3, The High Window. 7/10
Audible track 7, story 4, The Lady in the Lake. 6/10
Despite the well made plays and Toby Stephens remarkable portrayal of Chandler's Marlowe, i couldn't finish this. Not my cup of tea. But I'll score this objectively at an average 5/10
Scoring: 0 bad; 1-3 poor; 4-6 average; 7-9 good; 10 excellent.
Audible track 1, Story 1, the Big Sleep. 4/10
Audible track 3, Story 2, Farewell My Lovely. 6/10
Audible track 5, story 3, The High Window. 7/10
Audible track 7, story 4, The Lady in the Lake. 6/10
Despite the well made plays and Toby Stephens remarkable portrayal of Chandler's Marlowe, i couldn't finish this. Not my cup of tea. But I'll score this objectively at an average 5/10
Scoring: 0 bad; 1-3 poor; 4-6 average; 7-9 good; 10 excellent.
June 15, 2020
Four stars, mainly for Toby Stephens' gritty and mischievous interpretation of Marlowe. Each reading/listening of The Big Sleep gives me something new (i.e "I can't believe I missed that the last time!") and The Lady in the Lake, well, let's just read that one again. These radio dramas effectively capture the nastiness of mid-century Los Angeles...
September 21, 2021
Disappointing, heavily abridged adaption with bland production values. The voiceactors are great though.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews