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Jan 1, 1888 — Jan 1, 1959· 71 yrs

UNITED STATES AUTHOR · DETECTIVE AND MYSTERY · FICTION

Raymond Chandler

Also known as: Raymond CHANDLER, Chandler Chandler Raymond

46
BOOKS
3.9
AVG RATING (146)
10
READERS

Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age 44, 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 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).

Chicago, United States
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It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.

— from The Big Sleep

Most acclaimed

#2

Playback

1976

3.4 (9)

In Chandler's final novel, Marlowe is hired by an influential lawyer he's never heard of to tail a gorgeous redhead, but decides he prefers to help out the redhead. She's been acquitted of her alcoholic husband's murder, but her father-in-law prefers not to take the court's word for it.

#1

The high window

1942

3.5 (12)

Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the 1940s and 1950s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. In The High Window, Marlowe starts out on the trail of a single stolen coin and ends up knee-deep in bodies. His client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part. But Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. If Marlowe doesn’t wrap this one up fast, he’s going to end up in jail—or worse, in a box in the ground. Starring Toby Stephens, this thrilling dramatization by Robin Brooks retains all the wry humor of Chandler’s serpentine suspense novel.

#3

The Big Sleep

4.1 (22)

General Sternwood is a sickly old man who has hired private detective Philip Marlowe to sort out gambling debts accrued by his wayward daughter, Carmen. The debts are owed to a bookseller, Arthur Geiger. Marlowe agrees to take on the case and also learns, from Sternwood's elder daughter, Vivian Rutledge, that a good friend of Sternwood's, Sean Regan, mysteriously disappeared a month earlier.

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