Upon the publication of his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), Raymond Chandler was hailed as one of the leading practitioners of the American hard-boiled detective novel, but he received virtually no recognition as a writer of serious literature. During...
In the late 1940s well-known British author and critic Evelyn Waugh hailed Raymond Chandler as America's "greatest living writer." Poet W. H. Auden stated that Chandler's mystery novels "should be read and judged, not as escape literature, but as works o...
Farewell, My Lovely is a 1940 novel by Raymond Chandler, the second novel he wrote featuring Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. Three movie adaptations have been made, see...
On Crime Instead of the mayhem and pyrotechnics that have become de rigueur for the opening chapter of today's thrillers, Steve Hamilton's "Night Work" delivers a nuanced portrait of Joe Trumbull as he tapes his hands and gazes out the window at a...
ORONO, Maine -- It is, I know, a luxury few get to experience, and it is a pain, to some degree, most everyone must bear. It is this: Spending your last night in the home in which you grew up -- for me, the...