Raymond Chandler

"His thin, claw-like hands were folded loosely on the rug, purple-nailed. A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock." Published in 1939, when Raymond Chandler was 50, this is the first of the Philip Marlowe novels. Its bursts of sex, violence, and explosively …

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. …

Crime fiction master Raymond Chandler's second novel featuring Philip Marlowe, the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times). Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel …

Crime fiction master Raymond Chandler's fourth novel featuring Philip Marlowe, the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times). In The Lady in the Lake, hardboiled crime fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives—one a rich man's and one a poor man's—who have become the …

Crime fiction master Raymond Chandler's third novel featuring Philip Marlowe, the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times). A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune—the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers …

The Little Sister is a 1949 novel by Raymond Chandler, the fifth in his popular Philip Marlowe series. The story is set in late 1940s Los Angeles. The novel centers on the little sister of a Hollywood starlet and has several scenes involving the film industry. It was partly inspired by Chandler's experience working as …

Playback is the final complete novel by Raymond Chandler, which features his iconic creation Philip Marlowe. It was published in 1958, the year before his death.

In The Simple Art of Murder, which was prefaced by the famous Atlantic Monthly essay of the same name, noir master Raymond Chandler argues the virtues of the hard-boiled detective novel, and this collection, mostly drawn from stories he wrote for the pulps, demonstrates Chandler's imaginative, entertaining facility …

Poodle Springs is the eighth Philip Marlowe novel. It was started in 1958 by Raymond Chandler, who left it unfinished at his death in 1959. The four chapters he had completed, which bore the working title "The Poodle Springs Story", were subsequently published in Raymond Chandler Speaking, a collection of letter …