Raymond Chandler

Lore & Background

Chandler is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, a style he developed alongside Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and other writers for the pulp magazine Black Mask. His first short story appeared there in 1933, and his first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. He wrote seven novels in his lifetime; all but one have been adapted into motion pictures, some multiple times.

His protagonist, the private detective Philip Marlowe, is often regarded as synonymous with the profession itself, much like Hammett’s Sam Spade. Chandler’s work had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. His novels The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake, and The Long Goodbye all ranked among the Crime Writers’ Association’s 100 best crime novels. The Long Goodbye was praised as arguably the first mystery since Hammett’s The Glass Key to qualify as a serious mainstream novel.

Chandler was also a perceptive critic of the genre; his essay “The Simple Art of Murder” is considered canonical. In it, he defined the detective as a man of honor who must walk down mean streets without being mean himself, a complete and common yet unusual man. Critic Robert B. Parker described Marlowe as the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, sentimental, cynical, and rebellious—a Romantic tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world where the American dream had run out of room.

The Late Bloom and the Hardboiled Revolution

Chandler did not discover his literary vocation until his mid-forties. In 1932, the Great Depression cost him his position as an oil company executive, and at forty-four he reinvented himself as a writer of detective fiction. His debut short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot," appeared in 1933 in the pulp magazine Black Mask, and his first full-length novel, The Big Sleep, followed in 1939.

Over the next two decades he published seven novels, with an eighth left unfinished at his death in 1959 and later completed by Robert B. Parker. Beyond his own body of work, Chandler is recognized as a founding figure of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, standing alongside Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and other Black Mask contributors. His stylistic fingerprints on American popular literature remain immense, reshaping how the genre was conceived and how its heroes were imagined for generations of readers and filmmakers.

Marlowe as the Culminating American Hero

Philip Marlowe, Chandler's recurring protagonist, occupies a place in the literary imagination comparable to Hammett's Sam Spade; both are considered by some to be virtually synonymous with the phrase "private detective." Humphrey Bogart brought both characters to the screen, and many regard him as the definitive Marlowe. Robert B. Parker offered a sweeping assessment: Chandler had crafted "the culminating American hero," a figure who was simultaneously wised-up and hopeful, cynical and sentimental, tough and Romantic. Parker placed Marlowe at the geographical and spiritual edge of the American dream, "at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room," arguing that no literary hero had ever been more perfectly congruent with his landscape. Chandler, Parker suggested, engaged this hero in the examination of good and evil at exactly the historical moment when the nation's central certainty of good was crumbling.

Critical Authority and Lasting Recognition

Chandler was not merely a practitioner of detective fiction but a thoughtful critic of it. His essay "The Simple Art of Murder" is widely regarded as the canonical statement on the genre, and in it he articulated a vision of the detective as a "complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man," a man of honor defined by instinct rather than declaration.

His novels have endured in critical rankings: The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers' Association's poll of the hundred best crime novels, and Farewell, My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake, and The Long Goodbye all made the same list. The Long Goodbye in particular was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key to qualify as a serious mainstream novel that happened to contain elements of mystery. All but Playback have been adapted into films, some more than once.

A Displaced Youth and a Deferred Calling

Chandler's path to writing was long and circuitous. Born in Chicago in 1888, he spent his earliest years in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, before his alcoholic father abandoned the family in the early 1890s. His Irish-born mother relocated him to England in 1900, where he was classically educated at Dulwich College, a school whose alumni included P. G. Wodehouse and C. S. Forester. He passed a civil service examination, took an Admiralty post, and resigned in disgust at its servility.

A brief stint as a journalist for the Daily Express proved fruitless. A defining blow came when a young man named Richard Barham Middleton, whom Chandler considered far more talented, committed suicide in Antwerp; the incident convinced the young Chandler that a literary career was out of reach. He later served in World War I with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, saw trench combat in France, and was hospitalized twice with Spanish flu before the war ended.

Did You Know?

• Chandler's first short story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot', took him five months to write and sold for $180.
• Chandler was a first cousin to actor Max Adrian, a founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.