SOURCE: An introduction to Killer in the Rain, by Raymond Chandler, Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1964, pp. vii-xi.

In the following essay, Durham discusses Chandler's efforts to develop his short detective stories into serious novels concerned with themes of social injustice.

During his lifetime Raymond Chandler published twenty-three short stories. Yet of this relatively small output only fifteen are generally known to the reading public. For a quarter of a century the remaining eight have lain buried in the crumbling pages of old pulp magazines. And these eight stories are among his finest.

For one who became, with Dashiell Hammett, a leading writer of 'the poetry of violence', it is odd indeed that Chandler should have published his first story at the age of forty-five. When this first story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot', appeared in December 1933, Chandler was only one of the many good writers of the old Black Mask school...