SOURCE: "Raymond Chandler: The Smell of Fear," in Which Way Did He Go?: The Private Eye in Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Ross MacDonald, Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982, pp. 33-52.

In the following essay, Margolies presents an overview of Chandler's career, commenting on his themes, style, and characters, as well as placing his works in their cultural and historical contexts.

Raymond Chandler was [Dashiell] Hammett's principal successor—his melancholy, tough-talking hero, Philip Marlowe, is one of the best-known and widely imitated popular heroes of the 1940s. Marlowe is a six-foot-tall, thirty-eight-year-old bachelor who works for himself because he is too much of an individualist to take orders from others. He is not very successful financially—his office is somewhat shabby and his living quarters spare—not because he cannot find clients but because he can be neither bought off nor scared off by the rich...