WORLD MYSTERY TOUR: “C” is for CALIFORNIA–Part One
So many mysteries and thrillers are set in California. I will pick ones that are of note for one reason or the other, and my apologies for anyone that I might have omitted.
First, an acknowledgement to writers who have set their hardboiled fiction in Los Angeles. The hardboiled detective gets enmeshed in the crime and wickedness all around him, yet is still somehow detached from it. Any emotion is replaced by a tough, cynical attitude. One may argue which city is grittier, but I feel Los Angeles is the best hardboiled location. People move to LA to do their own thing, not to socialize. That is where the detachment comes from, and thus LA gives you hardboiled on a silver platter. In this vast metropolitan area (I live in Pasadena but still sometimes say I live in Los Angeles), you, the solitary driver in your car are surrounded by a sea of cars, all of them with their windows tightly shut. You are there and you look like you’re there, but in fact you are aloof from everyone, just like the hardboiled detective.
Prominent among hardboiled writers was Raymond Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959). One of the most quoted authors for his “Chandlerisms,” he had a strong influence on American popular literature, and is considered to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, of the hardboiled school of detective fiction.
RAYMOND CHANDLER (Photo: telegraph.co.uk)
His famous protagonist, Philip Marlowe, has an office at #615 on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building on Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar, which is quintessential Hollywood (never to be confused with Beverly Hills). Years ago when I came to Los Angeles, Hollywood Boulevard was grungy and fading like a sad old movie star, and it was easy to imagine Philip Marlowe walking this street. But now, with the Dolby Theater, a huge glass-facaded Gap Store and other familiar chains, the boulevard is bright and glitzy but with less character than before.
Some of Chandler’s masterpieces are Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). I have not read everything Chandler wrote, but some of my most favorite lines are:
From The High Window–”He didn’t curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in…”
From The Big Sleep–“Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains…”
From The Long Goodbye–”She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her…”
It’s much harder to pull these lines off in twenty-first century writing, but some novelists can still do it, and we’ll take a look at one or two of them in upcoming “C is for California” blogs.
