Fallen Angels: Six Noir Tales Told for Television

by Raymond Chandler, James Elroy (Preface)

Includes six short stories written by masters of mystery and crime fiction, along with a screen adaptation of each story

Genres: Crime

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 1993

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

[Joe Noir · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great companion book to the Showtime series (1993-1995). The series took original noir stories from Chandler, Ellroy, Woolrich, etc., and adapted them for television, often giving young or first time directors like Steven Soderbergh, Tom Hanks, and Tom Cruise (yes, that's correct) a chance to direct an episode. This volume contains stories from the first season. Also included are the adapted screenplays of each, and several production and behind the scenes stills. Altogether a pretty good book, regardless of what you may think of the series. I especially liked "Since I don't Have You" by James Ellroy (who also provides the introduction), but also included are "I'll Be Waiting" by Raymond Chandler, "The Frightening Frammis" by Jim Thompson, "Dead End for Delia" by William Campbell Gault, "Murder Obliquely" by Cornell Woolrich, and "The Quiet Room" by Jonathan Craig. This book, and each of these stories, is well worth your time.

[Daisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I worked on this tv series.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

dig it.