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Raymond Chandler

Born

in Chicago, Illinois, The United States

July 23, 1888

Died

March 26, 1959

Genre

Hard Boiled, Mystery, Thriller

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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 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." ...more

Combine Editions
Raymond Chandler’s books

Average rating: 4.01 · 388,867 ratings · 23,149 reviews · 446 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1) 3.94 avg rating — 169,000 ratings — published 1939 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6) 4.19 avg rating — 46,913 ratings — published 1953 — 461 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2) 4.09 avg rating — 43,002 ratings — published 1940 — 450 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4) 4.06 avg rating — 28,208 ratings — published 1943 — 50 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The High Window (Philip Marlowe, #3) 4.04 avg rating — 25,520 ratings — published 1942 — 34 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5) 3.98 avg rating — 18,928 ratings — published 1949 — 314 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Trouble Is My Business (Philip Marlowe, #8) 4.06 avg rating — 13,091 ratings — published 1950 — 296 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Playback (Philip Marlowe, #7) 3.80 avg rating — 11,126 ratings — published 1958 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Simple Art of Murder 4.13 avg rating — 6,289 ratings — published 1944 — 103 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler, Robert B. Parker 3.60 avg rating — 5,337 ratings — published 1989 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Raymond Chandler…

Series by Raymond Chandler

Philip Marlowe (8 books)
by

Raymond Chandler

4.02 avg rating — 362,930 ratings

Veteran book nerds will be familiar with this dilemma: You’re in the mood for a certain kind of book, but traditional genre and subgenre labels...

Polls

June 2017 New School Classic Poll

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, 351 pgs, 1905

48 votes, 15.0%

The Color Purple by Alice Walker, 295 pgs, 1982

43 votes, 13.4%

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, 218 pgs, 1996

42 votes, 13.1%

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, 471 pgs, 1940

24 votes, 7.5%

My Ántonia by Willa Cather, 232 pgs, 1918

22 votes, 6.9%

The Godfather by Mario Puzo, 448, 1969

19 votes, 5.9%

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, 304 pgs, 1969

16 votes, 5.0%

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, 308 pgs, 1967

15 votes, 4.7%

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, 231 pgs, 1939

13 votes, 4.0%

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence, 654 pgs, 1913

13 votes, 4.0%

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, 459 pgs, 1969

12 votes, 3.7%

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, 335 pgs, 1946

11 votes, 3.4%

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, 418 pgs, 1931

10 votes, 3.1%

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, 359 pgs, 1950

10 votes, 3.1%

The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata, 189 pgs, 1954

8 votes, 2.5%

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, 224 pgs, 1989

7 votes, 2.2%

Titanic by Filson Young, 236 pgs, 1912

5 votes, 1.6%

The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau, 320 pgs, 1964

3 votes, 0.9%

321 total votes

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