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The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback

Introduction by Tom Hiney

Part of Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series

Author Raymond Chandler
Introduction by Tom Hiney
Look inside
Hardcover
$35.00 US
Knopf | Everyman's Library
On sale Oct 15, 2002 | 1016 Pages | 9780375415029
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Chandler's four later novels. The Lady in the Lake follows Marlowe out of his natural (city-streets) habitat, into the mountains above L.A. and deep into trouble. In The Little Sister, he uncovers a little blackmail, a lot of drugs, and more than enough murder. In The Long Goodbye, a war-scarred drunk, his nymphomaniac wife, and Marlowe—on the run from a psychotic gangster and angry cops. In Playback, a well-endowed red-head, murder and, of course, Marlowe.


“[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

“[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
© (illustration) Michael J. Balzano

Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888 -1959) was the master practitioner of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Although he was born in Chicago, Chandler spent most of his boyhood and youth in England where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a freelance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, Chandler served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (R. A. F.). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing fiction, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. Chandler’s detective stories often starred the brash but honorable Philip Marlowe (introduced in 1939 in his first novel, The Big Sleep) and were noted for their literate presentation and dead-on critical eye. Never a prolific writer, Chandler published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. Some of Chandler’s novels, like The Big Sleep, were made into classic movies which helped define the film noir style. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California on March 26, 1959.

View titles by Raymond Chandler

About

Chandler's four later novels. The Lady in the Lake follows Marlowe out of his natural (city-streets) habitat, into the mountains above L.A. and deep into trouble. In The Little Sister, he uncovers a little blackmail, a lot of drugs, and more than enough murder. In The Long Goodbye, a war-scarred drunk, his nymphomaniac wife, and Marlowe—on the run from a psychotic gangster and angry cops. In Playback, a well-endowed red-head, murder and, of course, Marlowe.


“[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

“[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

Author

© (illustration) Michael J. Balzano

Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888 -1959) was the master practitioner of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Although he was born in Chicago, Chandler spent most of his boyhood and youth in England where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a freelance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, Chandler served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (R. A. F.). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing fiction, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. Chandler’s detective stories often starred the brash but honorable Philip Marlowe (introduced in 1939 in his first novel, The Big Sleep) and were noted for their literate presentation and dead-on critical eye. Never a prolific writer, Chandler published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. Some of Chandler’s novels, like The Big Sleep, were made into classic movies which helped define the film noir style. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California on March 26, 1959.

View titles by Raymond Chandler

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