Published in 1939, this is Raymond Chandler's first novel and features Philip Marlowe, the neat, clean, shaved and sober man who was everything the well-dressed detective should be. Raymond Chandler wrote three other classic novels: "Farewell my Lovely", "The Lady in the Lake" and "The Long Goodbye", all of which feature Philip Marlowe. He also wrote the screenplays for "Double Indemnity" and "The Blue Dahlia" both of which were nominated for an Oscar.
Praise for Raymond Chandler
"Raymond Chandler is a master." --"The New York Times"
"[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered." --"The New Yorker
""Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious." --Robert B. Parker, "The New York Times Book Review
""Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye." --"Los Angeles Times
"Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist." --"The Boston Book Review
"Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler's prose. . . . He wrote like an angel." --"Literary Review
"[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision." --Joyce Carol Oates, "The New York Review of Books
""Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence." --Ross Macdonald
""Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude." --Erle Stanley Gardner
Author Biography
Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.
