The poet W.H. Auden shunned detective stories because, he wrote, “Once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it.” Auden was not alone; 20th-century readers couldn’t get enough of them, and authors struggled to keep up. Erle Stanley Gardner published over 80 novels featuring his lawyer-sleuth Perry Mason, while Agatha Christie’s 66 mysteries made her the bestselling author of all time, after Shakespeare and the Bible.
Christie’s posh British style—the suspects in the drawing room, the body in the shrubbery—inspired TV hits like “Columbo” and “Murder She Wrote,” and movies right up to the recent “Knives Out” (2019) and its upcoming sequel.
By the 1920s in America, pulp magazines like “Detective Story Magazine” were thrilling their readership with tales that were nearly as lurid as their cover art. The “pulps,” along with novels like Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” (1930), rejected the genteel conventions of British mysteries in favor of a new, “hard-boiled” style marked by fast-paced action, gritty urban settings, and tough, slangy dialogue.
The Best in Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction
Raymond Chandler, regarded as the greatest mystery writer, published his first novel at age 51. (Public Domain)
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) has been called the greatest of all mystery writers, though he only completed seven novels. This was in part because he started late. He published his first story at age 45 and his first novel at 51, proving that it’s never too late to follow your dreams and do what you’re meant to do.
Born in Chicago and then raised and classically educated in England, Chandler moved with his mother, Florence, to Los Angeles in 1913. The lazy little town with palm trees was just starting to expand into the sprawling, teeming metropolis that Chandler would portray in words more tellingly than any other writer.
Bringing a Detective to Life
Chandler's famous character, Philip Marlowe, first appeared under that name in the novel "The Big Sleep." Movie poster for the 1978 film starring Robert Mitchum as Marlowe. (Public Domain)
Chandler’s private eye, Philip Marlowe, is nothing like Hammett’s amoral, promiscuous Sam Spade or the gumshoes of more recent detective fiction, who can be just as cruel and violent as the bad guys. Chandler explained in his “The Simple Art of Murder“:
“In everything that can be called art, there is a quality of redemption. ... Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. ... He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”
Because Marlowe is honest, he is poor, charging little for his services and returning his clients’ money if he can’t solve their problems. He pays a steep price for his integrity, getting beat up, knocked unconscious, and even poisoned on a regular basis. He lives alone and has no apparent love life.
His plots, like life, are complicated and sometimes hard to follow. While filming “The Big Sleep” (1946), director Howard Hawks asked Chandler who killed the chauffeur. The author famously replied that he had no idea. His stories are intriguing and full of twists and turns. But above all, we read Chandler for his vivid characters, extraordinary powers of observation and description, sly sense of humor, and the beauty and precision of his prose.
The 1946 film "The Big Sleep" starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. (Public Domain)
A while back, I started a well-reviewed new novel set in Los Angeles. When I read “the heavy scent of bougainvillea” I threw the book in the trash. Bougainvillea is a gorgeous flower but it has no scent.
Chandler would never make that mistake. No one would put him on the same level as Shakespeare, but like our language’s greatest poet, he seems to know everything about everything: geography, weather, plants, animals, chemistry, manufacturing, police procedure—even the particular color of a smoggy sunset over the ocean. It’s especially fun, if you know L.A., to follow Marlowe through familiar neighborhoods, streets, and even buildings. He changes place names only occasionally, such as when he uses “Bay City” as a stand-in for Venice Beach and Santa Monica.
Chandler sees beneath the surface, too, of America’s Paradise Lost. He finds the right words to express Los Angeles’s particular moral and spiritual malaise, a critique even more valid today than it was 80 years ago.
Again like Shakespeare, Chandler adores metaphors and similes; both authors have been criticized for overusing them. For example, “His smile was as stiff as a frozen fish,” “He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food,” and, “She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.” This habit makes Chandler easy to parody. Even a Broadway musical, “City of Angels,” parodied his style. But parodies don’t mean that a writer’s style is bad, just that it’s distinctive. I wouldn’t want to lose a single one of Chandler’s trademark figures of speech.
Best Works
“The Long Goodbye” came to the screen in 1973 with Elliott Gould as Marlowe. (Public Domain)
Chandler’s first six novels are highly recommended. All have been made into movies, some of them more than once. He’s one of the very few novelists whose dialogue doesn’t have to be rewritten to sound natural when actors speak it. These film adaptations are as follows:
“The Big Sleep” was superbly filmed in 1946 with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and remade in 1978.
“Farewell My Lovely” was also filmed in 1942 (titled “The Falcon Takes Over”) and 1975, but the version you have to see is “Murder, My Sweet” (1944), with Dick Powell surprisingly good as Marlowe.
“The High Window” was filmed under different titles in 1942 (“Time to Kill”) and 1947 (“The Brasher Doubloon”), but both versions are hard to find.
“Lady in the Lake” (1947), starring and directed by Robert Montgomery, has only the book’s tricky plot to recommend it. Filmed subjectively through Marlowe’s eyes, it’s an awkward, unsatisfying experiment.
“The Long Goodbye” came to the screen in 1973 with Elliott Gould as Marlowe.
“The Little Sister,” an acid portrayal of Hollywood and the movie business, was adapted as “Marlowe” in 1969. Stirling Siliphant rewrote much of the dialogue, and in the end created a disappointing rendition.
As for his screenwriting, an absolute must-see is “Double Indemnity” (1944), which Chandler scripted with Billy Wilder. Starring Fred MacMurray and a luminous Barbara Stanwyck, it may be the greatest of all noir films.
Movie poster for the 1944 film noir “Double Indemnity,” co-written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. (Public Domain)
All of Chandler’s novels, his early stories, and a good selection of essays and letters can be found in the two-volume Library of America Edition box set, which established his work as lasting literature, above and beyond the crime fiction genre.
Reading Chandler, we feel a kinship with Marlowe. Like him, we trudge through this fallen world: lied to, beaten down, misunderstood, given no credit or reward for doing good. The little lamp of our conscience and integrity is all we have to light our way in the darkness. It isn’t much to go on but, God willing, it’s enough.
Stephen Oles has worked as an inner city school teacher, a writer, actor, singer, and a playwright. His plays have been performed in London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Long Beach, California. He lives in Seattle and is currently working on his second novel.
