Will a New Philip Marlowe Novel Bring the Legendary Private Eye Back to the Movies? | BLOUIN ARTINFO Will a New Philip Marlowe Novel Bring the Legendary Private Eye Back to the Movies? BY Graham Fuller | August 14, 2012 The deadly little sister: Humphrey Bogart and Martha Vickers in Howard Hawks's “The Big Sleep” (1946 – Warner Bros.) Edward Hopper British actor Clive Owen/Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images When it comes to his movie career, is Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe sleeping the big sleep? Or is there a light at the end of the tunnel, albeit one that’s no bigger than the glow on a dead man’s stogie? Back in 2007, it was announced by Variety that the comic-book novelist Frank Miller (“Sin City”) would write and direct an adaptation of Chandler’s never-filmed novella “Trouble Is My Business,” to star Clive Owen as the most iconic hard-boiled private eye to have emerged from the golden age of pulp fiction.

It was to be the first of several new Marlowe outings shepherded by Miller, which may have also included “The Big Sleep” and “Farewell, My Lovely.” Nothing has been heard of the project since. However, the news, reported in the New York Times , that the Irish novelist John Banville has been authorized by the Chandler estate to write a fresh Marlowe novel inevitably revitalizes the possibility that the principled but jaded gumshoe could eventually return to the screen. The novel will be published by Henry Holt & Company in 2013. Banville, 66, is the author of the Man Booker Prize-winning “The Sea.” He has also written, under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, five novels featuring the hard-drinking Dublin pathologist Quirke, including the newly published “Venegeance,” and these align him with Chandler. The new Marlowe novel will appear under the Benjamin Black rubric.

According to benjaminblackbooks.com , Banville will bring back Marlowe’s on-and-off-again policeman friend Bernie Ohls, and the book will take place in 1940s Bay City (Chandler’s fictional version of the sleazy Santa Monica of the time) and will “feature Chandler’s hallmark noir ambience.” “I love the challenge of following in the very large footsteps of Raymond Chandler,” Banville said. “I began reading Chandler as a teenager, and frequently return to the novels. This idea has been germinating for several years and I relish the prospect of setting a book in Marlowe’s California, which I always think of in terms of Edward Hopper ’s paintings. Bay City will have a slightly surreal, or hyper-real, atmosphere that I look forward to creating.” If or when Banville’s book gets made into a movie, it would mark the first Marlowe appearance on screen since Tomás Hanák played a version of him in 2003’s “Smart Philip,” which was never released outside Eastern Europe.

(A 2007 ABC/Touchstone series called “Marlowe” was apparently filmed but never broadcast.) The previous American incarnation of Marlowe was by James Caan in HBO’s “Poodle Springs,” based on the novel begun by Chandler in 1958 and completed in 1989, 30 years after his death, by Robert B. Parker, who like Banville had the backing of the Chandler estate. Dealing with Marlowe’s life as a newlywed, the finished novel was weak, there being a disjunction between the four decent chapters Chandler wrote and those written by Parker. Parker’s 1991 followup, “Perchance to Dream,” a sequel to “The Big Sleep,” was equally lackluster, failing Chandler it its lack of psychological depth. However, in the “Poodle Springs” movie, which was set in 1963, Caan was convincing as an older, warier Marlowe than had hitherto been seen.

Just as Banville will have to follow in “very large footsteps” in taking up Chandler’s typewriter and the existential drift of his Marlowe stories, so would any actor following Humphrey Bogart, who played the definitive Marlowe in “The Big Sleep” (1946), Howard Hawks’s supreme blend of film noir and screwball comedy. Notwithstanding that Chandler’s choice was Cary Grant, Bogart aced Marlowe’s imperturbability, his low-key wisecracking, his handling of the psychopathic Carmen Sternwood (played by Martha Vickers, who outshone Lauren Bacall as her older sister Vivian), and his dealings with the array of criminals and lowlifes (foremost among them Elisha Cook Jr.’s doughty little Harry Jones). Elliott Gould’s shabby, Rip Van Winkle-shaded Marlowe (Elliott Gould), set adrift in hippie-era L.A., has his own integrity and cool in Robert Altman’s revisionist “The Long Goodbye” (1973).

Robert Mitchum was the world-weariest of all the Marlowes opposite Charlotte Rampling’s femme fatale in Dick Richards’s neo-noir “Farewell, My Lovely” (1975), but Mitchum should never have succumbed to Michael Winner’s dreadful British remake of “The Big Sleep” (1978). The other Marlowes have largely disappointed. Robert Montgomery was terse and masculine enough when he directed himself in “The Lady in the Lake” (1947), but the movie was overawed by its use of the subjective camera. Dick Powell wore toughness on his sleeve in Robert Sidomak’s “Murder, My Sweet” (1944), the first Marlowe film and the one that hews closest to classic noir atmospherics. George Montgomery (1947’s “The Brasher Doubloon,” based on Chandler’s “The High Window”), James Garner (1969’s “Marlowe,” based on Chandler’s “The Little Sister”), and Powers Boothe (HBO’s 1983-86 series) all played Marlowe without nuance.

Danny Glover was a solid Marlowe in Showtime’s “Red Wind” (1995), but the casting of an African-American suggested the influence of Walter Mosley’s “Easy” Rawlins. The Banville assignment is auspicious, both for Chandlerians and, hopefully, the movies. There’s a topical resonance in a cynic “who is neither tarnished nor afraid” walking those 1940s mean streets in the shadow of the soulless early 2010s – could Clive Owen clear his calendar for the next few years, please? Below: the trailer for Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" - Marlowe redux [content:shareblock] Reinventing Philip Marlowe | Books | The Guardian Rereading Reinventing Philip Marlowe Raymond Chandler turned crime fiction into art. When John Banville was asked to write a new Marlowe story he wondered how he could match the intricate plots and capture the spirit of the famous detective Watching the detective … Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart as private eye Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep from 1946.

Photograph: Rex Features Saturday 8 March 2014 03.00 EST First published on Saturday 8 March 2014 03.00 EST Share on Messenger Close It was in my teenage years that I first encountered the novels of Raymond Chandler . From childhood onwards I had been keen on crime fiction: like many boys I was fascinated by puzzles, eager to find out everything I could about adult passions, and unslakeably bloodthirsty. I liked in particular the Queens of Crime, that regiment of murderous ladies in flowered frocks, as I pictured them: Agatha Christie, of course, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, Georgette Heyer, and Dorothy L Sayers. Their brand of polite murder mystery, perfectly characterised in the title of WH Auden's 1948 essay "The Guilty Vicarage", provided a frequently unacknowledged but vital ingredient of a really satisfying whodunnit: cosiness. Chandler offered something original and exciting.

Philip Marlowe was a new kind of detective – poised and articulate, dry as a dry martini, as witty as Thurber and as disenchanted as Scott Fitzgerald – but there was also a quality to these novels I had not encountered before in crime fiction. Although I would hardly have been able to articulate the thought at the time, what I found most attractive in Chandler's work was the sumptuousness of the prose style. Even when the streets that Marlowe was obliged to go down were the meanest, the language in which they were described was rich in metaphor, at once sensuous and crisp, and marvellously redolent of mid-century California, a place and a time we all thought we were familiar with from the movies. "The most durable thing in writing is style," Chandler wrote in a letter to a literary agent in 1945. In this assertion and others like it he was laying claim to his place on Parnassus, if on one of the lower slopes.

Flaubert and Joyce complained frequently and loudly of having no choice but to scatter the gold coinage of their prose over the base metal of mere mortal doings, and Chandler too, in his less emphatic, more sardonic, way, sought to set himself among the gods of pure language, pure style. Like the bard of Bay City, the French and Irish masters of realist fiction frequently professed to care nothing for content and everything for form – and form, of course, was just another word for style. Writing to one of his numerous correspondents, Chandler insisted that "the only writers left who have anything to say are those who write about practically nothing and monkey around with odd ways of doing it". Out of their grand indifference, however, Flaubert created Emma Bovary and Frédéric Moreau, and Joyce Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus; and Chandler, not to be outdone, gave us Marlowe, the private eye of private eyes, who is among the immortals. Who was Chandler, where did he come from, and what formed him? Marlowe was a quintessential native Californian, but Chandler decidedly was not.

He was born in Chicago in 1888, into a Quaker family of Irish origins – by coincidence, his mother Florence was born in Waterford, the same Irish city from which his father's people had emigrated to America earlier in the 19th century. Maurice Chandler worked for the railroad, was an alcoholic and, if his son is to be believed, a waster, who abandoned his wife and son. In 1900 Florence Chandler transferred young Raymond and herself to Britain. Chandler attended Dulwich College, which lists PG Wodehouse among its old boys. "A classical education," Chandler later wrote, "saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what current fiction is too full of." He had hopes of becoming a barrister, but could not afford to go to university. However, his Waterford uncle, Ernest Thornton – a name that should have a place of honour in the annals of American literature – offered to send him to Europe for a year, to study French and German and to some degree to finish his education. Chandler spent time in Paris, Munich, Nuremberg and Vienna.

At the end of this Wanderjahr he returned to London and became a journalist, not very satisfactorily. Later he forsook the newspapers for a job in the civil service, with an equal lack of satisfaction. He also began to write poetry. All this seems hardly the typical apprenticeship of a crime writer, and certainly not of one who began his career by churning out hard-boiled stories for Black Mask and other pulp magazines that were so popular at the time. But then crime writing was a last resort for him. All his life he not only felt himself out of place geographically and socially – "a man without a country", as he said of himself – but considered that the writing work he was doing was beneath him, even in the years when he was receiving critical acclaim – Auden and Evelyn Waugh were among those who recognised his talent and originality – and earning a lot of money. He was ever on the lookout for slights, and in his letters never misses an opportunity to take a swipe at the highbrow critics, especially Edmund Wilson, his abiding bête noir.

Despairing of making a life for himself in Britain, and all but abandoning his ambitions to be a poet and essayist, he appealed again to Uncle Ernest over in Waterford, pledging that if Ernest would lend him £500 he would never press again on that sainted gentleman's generosity. Ernest, spotting an offer that even if he could he would be ill-advised to refuse, agreed. "On 10 July 1912," his latest biographer, Tom Williams, writes, "Raymond Chandler boarded the SS Merion at Liverpool. He was wearing a tailored suit, carrying his silver-tipped cane, and had $40 in his pocket. He was heading to America." He stopped in Nebraska for a while, scratching a living from odd jobs, then crossed the Rockies and landed at last on that tawny strip of coastline that, with a few intermittences, would be his home, however uneasily, for the rest of his life. In Los Angeles he worked as a bookkeeper, of all things, in a creamery, of all places.

Then, in 1917, he enlisted in the Canadian army, which, unlike the US army, would provide his mother with a stipend to live on while her son was serving abroad. In France he fought in the trenches, an experience that marked him – indeed, scarred him – for life. "Once you have had to lead a platoon into direct machine-gun fire, nothing is ever the same again," he said. After the war he once more worked in various jobs, the most long-lasting of which was with an oil company, from which he was dismissed in 1933 for drunkenness, absenteeism and moral turpitude – he had an eye, and more than an eye, for the secretaries. It was to be a long while before he came back to writing: his first detective story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in Black Mask in 1933, while his first novel, and his first masterpiece, The Big Sleep , did not appear until 1939, when he was 50. What was the cause of this fecklessness and restless discontent? More to the point, what was it that drove him to drink?

Here the question of sex rears its androgynous head, and a very loaded question it is. Some readers have detected strains of misogyny in his work, and certainly his attitude to women is guarded, to say the least – I think I am right in saying that in every one of the Marlowe novels the killer turns out to be a woman. His wife Cissy was 18 years older than he was, which meant she was only nine years younger than his mother. There is no doubt that he loved Cissy, and that he was devastated by her death, yet it seems to have been a distinctly peculiar marriage; but then, what marriage is not? Commentators have also pointed to traces of homoeroticism in the work. My friend the Chilean novelist Rodrigo Fresán suggests that the only person Marlowe ever really loved was Terry Lennox, the friend who betrayed him in what many consider to be Chandler's finest novel, The Long Goodbye.

We should keep in mind, however, that Chandler was a man of his time, a time in which women were women and men as often as not turned out to be Rock Hudson, and everyone tossed throwaway insults at "frails" – women, that is – effeminate men, black people and Jews. It does not make it right that everyone was doing it, but all the same, everyone was doing it. Chandler wrote, in the same letter quoted from above, that he was "fundamentally rather uninterested in plot" – that "rather" is an example of those jaded little Englishisms he frequently affected – and returned to the theme of the supremacy of style: "The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time." Here he was, surely unconsciously, echoing Henry James , who in his notebooks reminded himself that "In literature we move through a blest world in which we know nothing except by style, but in which also everything is saved by it." What Chandler was after, he said, was "richness of texture".

He pointed out that he "wrote pulp stories with as much care as slick stories [ie stories for literary magazines] … I obeyed the formula because I honestly liked it, but I was always trying to stretch it, trying to get in bits of peripheral writing which were not necessary but which I felt would have a subconscious effect even on the semi-literate readers." This is an artist speaking, and it was Chandler's achievement to lift the crime genre to the level of art – not high art, perhaps, which part of him disdained, but art all the same. He tried not to be pretentious. In "The Guilty Vicarage" Auden had singled him out for praise, which provoked an outburst of false modesty. "Auden leaves me lost and groping. His piece about detective stories was brilliant in the clear cold classical manner. But why drag me in?

I'm just a fellow who jacked up a few pulp novelettes into book form." Further on in the same letter, however, complaining that pulp-magazine editors would always take out descriptive passages because readers did not appreciate that kind of thing, he comes up with this wonderful encapsulation of his aims and his methods: "And I set out to prove them wrong. My theory was they just thought they cared nothing about anything but the action; that really, although they didn't know it, they cared very little about the action. The things they really cared about, and that I cared about, were the creation of emotion through dialogue and description; the things they remembered, that haunted them, were not for example that a man got killed, but that in the moment of his death he was trying to pick a paper clip up off the polished surface of a desk, and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a look of strain on his face and his mouth was half open in a kind of tormented grin, and the last thing in the world he thought about was death. He didn't even hear death knock on the door.

That damn little paper clip kept slipping away from his fingers and he just wouldn't push it to the edge of the desk and catch it as it fell." When my agent, Ed Victor, who represents the Chandler estate, first approached me with the suggestion that I might write a Philip Marlowe novel, I hesitated for a long time. Should I, an Irishman in the second decade of the 21st century, attempt to follow on from an iconic and much-loved writer whose first novel was published six years before I was born? There was much to daunt me. Could I invent a plot to match the master's fiendishly intricate mysteries? Would I be able to catch anything of the flavour of postwar Los Angeles, the accents, the atmosphere, the acrid feel of a time and place so specific to the Marlowe books? Above all, would I be able to reinvent a convincing Marlowe? I went back to the novels, of course, but also to the essays and the letters – especially the letters – and felt the pull of an irresistible affinity. Good crime writing is as difficult as any other kind, and, in its way, just as rewarding.

In The Black-Eyed Blonde – one of a list of possible titles that Chandler drew up, and which I was happy to borrow from – I have sought not to parrot Chandler, but to honour the spirit, vigorous, valiant and melancholy, of this master of English prose. And now I wish I could meet up with him in some shady bar on Sunset, slide on to the stool beside him, give him a light for his cigarette and buy him a gin gimlet, and ask him how I did. • To order The Black-Eyed Blonde by John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black) for £13.59 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk . Philip Marlowe - Book Series In Order Hardcover Paperback Kindle Philip Marlowe is a fictional private detective created by Raymond Chandler. The earliest appearance of Marlowe was in the short story Finger Man and the first novel to chronicle his adventures was The Big Sleep. Philip Marlowe is a classic sort of private eye, he is a wisecracking, tough, heavy drinking private eye.

He does not shy away from the violent side of the job but does not use violence is a gratuitous manner. Despite his rough an tough demeanor is a cultured philosopher who enjoys chess and poetry. Marlowe’s modest office is located in Los Angeles. He smokes and his drinks of choice are whiskey or brandy, which he consumes frequently and in large amounts. He also has a knack of using liquor to loosen the tongues of those he wants to pry information out of. Marlowe is portrayed wearing a fedora and a suit in most situations. He is truly the archetype of the genre. The Big Sleep: Philip Marlowe takes over. Published in 1939 this is the first novel to feature Philip Marlowe as the lead character. The novel itself has been ranked as one of the top 100 novels of the 20th century and has been praised for its complexity and the depths of the secrets that are revealed throughout the narrative. The novel begins with Marlowe being called to the home of an elderly General, whose daughter has been the victim of a blackmail attempt. Things get more complicated when the investigation of the blackmailer leads Marlowe to the scene of a murder.

This however is only the first layer of the story. The disappearance of the General’s older daughters husband, which was mentioned to Marlowe when he took the blackmailing case, soon becomes the focus of the story. The tale takes the reader on a wild adventure filled with double crossing characters and plot twists. It is a pioneer in the genre of detective stories and established Philip Marlowe as the top dog in the trade. Anyone who has an interest in the crime/ mystery type of novel, must read the Big Sleep. It is an unavoidable masterpiece of modern literature. Farewell, My Lovely: Another triumph for Marlowe In this story Philip Marlowe gets tangled up in another twisting plot filled with memorable characters. As the novel begins, Marlowe is investigating a dead-end case. He sees a known felon barge into a nightclub, where he proceeds to kill the club manager. The felon gets away and another detective is given the case. Marlowe decides to help out the detective by giving him advice. Nulty, the detective assigned to the case ignores the advice so Marlowe decides to take it upon himself to solve the murder and catch the killer. Once more the novel takes the reader to many different locales.

Some of these are shady places with incredible characters who are once more out to save themselves and let the authorities sift through the information and clues and come up with the killer. Which will, of course, fall in the lap of Philip Marlowe in the end. Much like the first novel, the initial plot leads to a more complex story. The initial elements are just a means to an end. They allow the story to begin but are not what you are thinking about when the story is over. Cannibal What gives these stories their depth is the way in which they were produced. Chandler used a technique he called cannibalizing in order to create them. What this means is that he took the ideas from several short stories and adjusted them in order to fit them into one, coherent tale. Basically you are taking several different premises and plot lines and coaxing a linear story out of them. This explains the plot twists as the stories are not following a single plot, but rather several that are tweaked in order to fit together. Movies Ext. Many of the Philip Marlowe stories have been made into feature films and television shows. The ironic thing is that the first film based on a Marlowe story did not even star the private detective.

In 1942 a film version of Farewell, MyLady was developed. It was released under the title The Falcon Takes Over. The Falcon was an established film detective and, at the time, Philip Marlowe was unknown, so The Falcon got the part. The iconic character finally gained film notoriety in 1946 when Humphrey Bogart was named to play Philip Marlowe in the film version of The Big Sleep. The film was a great success and has been added to the United States National Film Registry for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance. This film along with the Farewell, MyLady were remade in the 1970’s, a tribute to the lasting importance of Marlowe as a character. Marlowe has also been the subject of numerous television programs. He first appeared in 1959 in a half hour series for the American Broadcasting Company. (ABC) This was a short lived attempt and only lasted one season. In the early 1980’s Philip Marlowe reemerged in a British mystery series that aired on HBO in the U.S.

It encompassed a total of 11 episodes was popular both with critics and the general public Philip Marlowe’s popularity however was not only limited to the written and visual medium. His stories were very popular radio programs in the late 40’s. In fact by 1949 it had the largest radio following of any program on air. A total of 114 radio episodes were produced for CBS radio. Philip Marlowe is the quintessential detective. Whenever you see a detective wearing a fedora, in a suit with his pants held up by suspenders, you are seeing Philip Marlowe. When a detective grabs a bottle of whiskey and pours himself a large glass or two while struggling to piece clues together, you are seeing Philip Marlowe. When the mystery seems utterly unsolvable, but the detective remembers a small piece of evidence that seemed insignificant but ends up being the key element to solving the mystery, you are seeing Philip Marlowe. Many have tried to imitate, but few have succeeded. If you want to get to the true nature of classic crime fiction, do yourself a failure and read some Philip Marlowe novels.

Philip Marlowe Philip Marlowe Created by Raymon d Chandler (1888-1959) "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and left the room." -- from Farewell, My Lovely What more can I say about PHILIP MARLOWE? Three Gun Mack may have been the first, Race Williams may have introduced the PI to the world and The Continental Op and Sam Spade may have staked out the ambiguous moral code that would fuel the genre for years, but it was Raymond Chandler's Marlowe that would define for all time who, what, where and why a private eye is. Traces of Marlowe run from Paul Pine to Jim Rockford to Ms. Tree to Lew Archer to Spenser. It's all here: the loneliness and infinite sadness to the quick, sarcastic cynical jibes that mask a battered and bruised romantic, the love/hate relationship with the cops, the corruption that exists in all levels of society. It's all here.

Philip Marlowe, for better or worse, is the archetypical private eye. By the time he wrote his famous essay, The Simple Art of Murder, even Chandler realized it. Philip Marlowe was born in Santa Rosa, California, in "that time out of time that allowed him to be 33 in 1933, 42 in 1953, and 43 1/2 in 1958", according to Bill Henkin. He runs a single man operation out of the Cahuenga Building in Los Angeles. Tall, and big enough to take care of himself, he likes liquor, women, reading, chess and working alone, and is educated enough that he boasts he can speak English "if he's required to." He used to work for the district attorney, but was fired for insubordination, thus starting a cliche that still hasn't run out of steam. How many ex-cops are there out there that seem to have become private eyes? Chandler first worked out the character of Marlowe in several short stories in Black Mask, featuring a variety of private eyes under different names.

Among these pre-heroes were John Dalmas , Carmady , Ted Carmady and Mallory . Marlowe has been adapted for film, television, radio, comics and audiotapes by all kinds of writers, sometimes quite successfully, particularly in film and radio, and sometimes rather disappointingly (television). As the centennial of his birth approached, there was renewed interest in Chandler and a demand for new product, so Marlowe started to appear in new novels and short stories written by other writers, again with mixed results. In 1987, Hiber Conteris wrote an original Marlowe novel, Ten Percent of Life, where Marlowe returns to hunt the killer of Chandler's literary agent. Unique, to say the least. The following year, Knopf published Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe-A Centennial Celebration, a collection of Marlowe short stories by most of the top names in detective fiction. Stories ranged from merely good to astounding, as various contemporary writers brought their own strengths to bear on ol' Phil. The glaring exemption from the list of author's was Robert B.

Parker , at the time the most successful of all private detective fiction writers, whose Spenser was at times so closely modelled on Marlowe as to be a parody. The reason was soon forthcoming. Parker had been at work completing Chandler's final Marlowe novel, Poodle Springs, wherein Marlowe and Linda get married (Chandler had often mentioned how difficult he had found it to write about Marlowe in a relationship). Given Spenser's relationship with Susan, the choice of Parker seemed not only right, but natural. The response to the book was decidedly mixed. Purists and other writer's in the genre screamed. Parker's own success with Spenser (including a truly mediocre, pretentious television show), and his perceived smugness probably contributed to the negative reaction. There was a lot of talk about audacity, and "how dare he?" Still, someone must have liked it. It was soon announced that Parker would write a second Marlowe novel, an all-original novel that acted as a sequel to The Big Sleep. When Perchance to Dream appearred in 1991, the grunts of protest rose to howls of anguish from certain quarters.

It's interesting to note all of this was directed at Parker and none at two dozen or so other writers in A Centennial Celebration who had attempted exactly the same thing Parker had, albeit in short story form. THE EVIDENCE "I see (Marlowe) always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated." -- from a letter from Chandler to Maurice Guinness, dated February 21, 1959 "I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like 'em myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings." "I'm a romantic, Bernie. I hear voices crying in the night and I go to see what's the matter. You don't make a dime that way. . . No percentage in it at all." -- Marlowe gives the game away, to a cop buddy "Leave us to do the thinking sweetheart. It takes equipment." -- Marlowe in The Little Sister To say goodbye is to die a little. Marlowe in The Long Goodbye UNDER OATH "Few pleasures in life are as seductive as reading Chandler.

When I open one of his books for a quick fact-check, I might not surface until ten chapters later... When the great Bruce Taylor ran San Francisco Mystery Books, he always kept a stack of The Long Goodbye next to a sign, 'This is the best book in the store.' Maybe not, but damn close." The Black-Eyed Blonde (2014)... Buy this book ... Buy the audio ... Kindle it! SHORT STORIES Most of Chandler's short stories featured earlier prototypes for Marlowe, who went by such monickers as Mallory , Ted Carmady , or John Dalmas , when they had any name at all. When they were later collected in volumes and reprinted, the names were mostly changed to Marlowe, however. So, here's what are generally available as Marlowe short stories these days, although only the last, "Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate" (AKA"Wrong Pidgeon" or "The Pencil"), was actually written as a Marlowe story..

"Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (December 1933, Black Mask; Mallory ) "Smart-Aleck Kill" (July 1934, Black Mask; Mallory ) "Finger Man" (October 1934, Black Mask; Carmady ) "Killer in the Rain" (January 1935, Black Mask; Carmady ) "Nevada Gas" (June 1935, Black Mask) "Spanish Blood" (November 1935, Black Mask) "Guns at Cyrano's" (January 1936, Black Mask; Ted Malvern ) "The Man Who Liked Dogs" (March 1936, Black Mask; Carmady ) "Noon Street Nemesis" (May 30, 1936, Detective Fiction Weekly; aka "Pick-up on Noon Stree") "Goldfish" (June 1936, Black Mask) "The Curtain" (September 1936, Black Mask; Carmady ) "Try the Girl" (January 1937, Black Mask; Carmady ) "Mandarin's Jade" (November 193

7, Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas ) "Red Wind" (January 1938, Dime Detective Magazine: John Dalmas ) "The King in Yellow" (March 1938, Dime Detective Magazine) "Bay City Blues" (June 1938; Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas ) "The Lady in the Lake" (January 1939, Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas ) "Pearls Are a Nuisance" (April 1939, Dime Detective Magazine) "Trouble Is My Business" (August 1939, Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas ) "I'll Be Waiting" (October 14, 1939, Saturday Evening Post) "The Bronze Door" (November 1939) "No Crime in the Mountains" (September 1941, Detective Story, John Evans ) "Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate" (April 6-10, 1959, London Daily Mail; as "Philip Marlowe's Last Case" in January 1962, EQMM; as "The Pencil" in September

 1965, Argosy; as "Wrong Pidgeon" in February 1969, Manhunt) COLLECTIONS & OMNIBUS EDITIONS Trouble is My Business (1972)...

Buy this book Pickup on Noon Street (1972) Collected Stories (2002; 1344 pages - all of his short fiction)... Buy this book The Big Sleep/Farewell, My Lovely/The High Window... Buy this book Omnibus edition with introduction by Diane Johnson. The Lady in the Lake/The Little Sister/The Long Goodbye/Playback.. Buy this book Omnibus edition with introduction by Tom Hiney. AND FOR THOSE WHO REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LOVE CHANDLER...

You can't go wrong with this beautiful collection from The Folio Society , who proudly provclaim that "In a world of declining publishing standards, where most books are cheaply printed, and bound using low-grade materials, (we) resolutely set store by traditional values of excellence; for our designers and production personnel the term 'quite good' means 'no good': only the best is good enough." Certainly, this handsome boxed set, comprising all seven Marlowe novels, long out of print and priced accordingly (I've seen people asking as much as $38,000 for it), is a vivid example of that maxim: these are utterly gorgeous, featuring specially commissioned artwork and an introduction by Chandler biographer ﻿Frank MacShane. Sure, you could probably buy the individual volumes, but then you wouldn't be able to see the spines all lined up: The Complete Novels Famous fictional private investigators Famous fictional private investigators Famous fictional private investigators Jake ‘J.J’ Gittes Played by Jack Nicholson in the film Chinatown, Jake ‘J.J’ Gittes is a fictional Irish-American private eye in the film-noir movies Chinatown and The Two Jakes. Gittes is played in both films by Jack Nicholson.

He lives in Los Angeles from where he runs his Private Detective business with the aid of his two assistants Larry and Duffy; famed for his unorthodox method, he’s known as a man to turn to if you want to get something done. However, despite his nasty reputation, he has strong morals: he will never betray a friend or extort a confidante and he just can’t help but come to the aid of a damsel in distress. Most of his cases revolve around marriage disputes, implied infidelities in which it’s up to him to prove or disprove the accused’s guilt, but for him these always seem to lead into murkier water – from the land rustling and water stealing conspiracy of Chinatown to the murder of a wealthy realtor linked to an orange grove connected to his past in The Two Jakes. Jim Rockford Jim Rockford is a fictional character on the television series The Rockford Files. The character is different from the average fictional P.I. in many ways. Instead of being an ex-cop, he is a former convict, albeit one who was falsely imprisoned. Instead of being a loner, he has a close relationship with his father, “Rocky”, and has a large group of friends.

He enjoys fishing and would rather spend time doing that than working. He often describes himself as “chicken” though often his actions speak otherwise. He lives in a small trailer on the beach. The detective story writer Stuart Kaminsky has written two books with Jim Rockford as the main character, entitled “The Green Bottle” and “The Devil on My Doorstep”. The show is famous for its opening segment featuring the answering machine of James Garner’s character. The title scene began with this line: “This is Jim Rockford. At the tone, leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.” Throughout the series, fictional characters from the show would call Jim and leave comical messages on his machine. Some of the messages are also published in the book: “This is Jim Rockford…”. Jim Rockford was referenced in ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, under the question “Which of these television detective characters is an ex-convict?” Magnum, P.I. Magnum, P.I. was an American television show that followed the adventures of Thomas Magnum (played by Tom Selleck), a private investigator living in Hawaii.

The show aired eight seasons on the CBS network from 1980 to 1988. Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV is a former U.S. Navy SEAL and Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) officer, who was awarded the Navy Cross and strongly prefers being called “private investigator” over “private eye” or “private detective.” He lives in the guest house of a posh beachfront estate (“Robin’s Nest”) on the island of Oahu, at the invitation of its owner, celebrity author of lurid novels Robin Masters (whose face is never actually seen), in exchange for his expertise in quality control of the estate’s security. Magnum is a graduate of the Naval Academy, where he played quarterback, and left the Navy in disillusionment after approximately ten years service. Philip Marlowe Philip Marlowe is a fictional private eye created by Raymond Chandler in a series of detective novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared in The Big Sleep, published in 1939.

Marlowe appeared in none of Chandler’s early short stories, though many of his early stories were republished years later with the names of the protagonists changed to Philip Marlowe; this change was presumably made with the approval of Chandler. Philip Marlowe’s character is foremost within the genre of hardboiled crime fiction that originated in the 1920s, most notably in Black Mask magazine, in which Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op and Sam Spade first appeared. The private eye is a pessimistic and cynical observer of a corrupt society, yet the enduring appeal of Marlowe and other hardboiled detectives lies in their tarnished idealism. Underneath the wisecracking, hard drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe is quietly contemplative and philosophical. He enjoys chess and poetry. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not bamboozled by the genre’s usual femme fatales, like Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep.

As Chandler wrote about his detective ideal in general, “I think he might seduce a duchess, and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin.” Sam Spade Sam Spade is a hardboiled private detective and the leading character in Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Black Mask. Sam Spade also appears in three short stories by Hammett. Sam Spade is most closely associated with actor Humphrey Bogart, who played the character in the most famous film version of The Maltese Falcon. This was the third and most well known movie version of the book, made in 1941 and directed by John Huston in his directorial debut. Spade was played by Ricardo Cortez in the 1931 version. In the 1936 film Satan Met a Lady, which was based on The Maltese Falcon, Warren William played the central character Ted Shane.

Despite a number of perceived flaws and misteps – Bogart failed to dye his hair to the characteristic blonde called for by the novel, was considered to be too small and dark for the role, with the wrong facial structure, and was even slighted for not being enough of a lecher – he turned out not only to have succeeded, but in fact to have created the archetypal private detective, one which has influenced “film noir” characters ever since. George Segal played Sam Spade, Jr., son of the original, in the 1974 spoof The Black Bird. The character was also parodied as Sam Diamond, played by Peter Falk, in the 1976 comedy Murder By Death. In the radio productions, Sam Spade was played by Edward G. Robinson in a 1943 Lux Radio Theatre production, and by Bogart himself in a 1946 Academy Award Theatre production, both on CBS. A 1946–1951 radio show called the Adventures of Sam Spade (on ABC, CBS, and NBC), starred Howard Duff (and later, Steve Dunne), and took a considerably more tongue-in-cheek approach to the character.

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who made his first published appearance in 1887. He was devised by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes is famous for his prowess at using logic and astute observation to solve cases. He is perhaps the most famous fictional detective, and indeed one of the best known and universally recognizable literary characters. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short-stories featuring his creation. Almost all were narrated by Holmes’ friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, with the exception of two narrated by Holmes himself and two more written in the third person. The stories first appeared in magazine serialization, notably in The Strand, over a period of forty years. This was a common form of publication at the time: Charles Dickens’ works were issued in a similar fashion. The stories cover a period from around 1878 up to 1903, with a final case in 1914. They are read as much for their characterization and the stylized late-Victorian world in which they take place as for the mysteries themselves.

More actors have portrayed Sherlock Holmes than any other character, and by 1964, according to a report in The Times, the worldwide sales of the stories were running second only to The Bible. Simon Templar Simon Templar is a fictional character in a long-running series of books by Leslie Charteris entitled The Saint published between 1928 and 1963, after which other authors collaborated on the books. New books featuring the character were written into the 1990s. Templar is known as The Saint because of his initials (ST), and also because of his heroic exploits, despite his nefarious reputation. He sometimes uses the nom de guerre Sebastian Tombs and also calls himself by sundry other names, all with the initials S.T., such as Sullivan Titwillow and Sugarman Treacle – the Saint has a boyish sense of humor. He frequently leaves a “calling card” at the scenes of his “crimes,” consisting of a stick drawing of a man with a halo, which is the logo of both the book series and the later 1960s TV series.

The books often allude to the possibility that Templar started his career as a criminal and suggest that he had somewhere developed the skills of a burglar. It is clear from the texts, however, that at the time of the books, all of his income derives from the pockets of the “ungodly” (as he terms those who live by a less moral code than his own.) There are several references to a “ten percent collection fee” as he extracts large sums of money from his victims, the remainder being returned to its owners or given away. His targets include corrupt politicians, warmongers, and indeed all the nastier forms of low life. “He claims he’s a Robin Hood,” bleats one of his victims, “but to me he’s just a robbing hood.” Inspector Jacques Clouseau Inspector Jacques Clouseau (later chief inspector) is a bumbling fictional French detective who was a character in Blake Edwards’s Pink Panther series. In most of the films, he was played by Peter Sellers, with one film in which he was played by Alan Arkin and one in which he was played by an uncredited Roger Moore. In the most recent Pink Panther film, he was played by Steve Martin.

He is also the inspiration of the main character in a series of animated shorts inspired by the titles of the feature films. Though the character in the animated The Inspector was never given a name, he is clearly based on Clouseau. Another cartoon obviously some what inspired by Clouseau is Inspector Gadget, whose makers were almost sued over the similarities between the characters. In many countries, such as Greece, this character’s name has become synonymous with policemen who keep making ludicrous assumptions and are utterly unable to crack even the easiest case. Contact Us The Big Sleep and Other Novels : Raymond Chandler : 9780141182612 The Big Sleep and Other Novels Paperback US$12.29 US$20.55 You save US$8.26 Free delivery worldwide Add to basket Add to wishlist Description Raymond Chandler was America's preeminent writer of detective fiction, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition of The Big Sleep and Other Novels collects three of the best novels to feature his hard-drinking, philosophising PI, Philip Marlowe. Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939.

Often imitated but never bettered, it is in Marlowe's long shadow that every fictional detective must stand - and under the influence of Raymond Chandler's addictive prose that every crime author must write. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in Farewell My Lovely, on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner. And the inimitable Marlowe is able to prove that trouble really is his business in Raymond Chandler's brilliant epitaph, The Long Goodbye. Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was born in Chicago. It was during the Depression era that he seriously turned his hand to writing and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, followed six years later by his first novel, The Big Sleep, adapted into Howard Hawks' classic 1946 film noir, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

If you liked The Big Sleep and Other Novels, you might enjoy Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards that others still try to attain' Sunday Times 'Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.' Paul Auster, author of The New York Trilogy 'Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angelos with a romantic presence' Ross Macdonald, author of The Drowning Pool show more Product details 128 x 194 x 32mm | 439.98g Publication date Philip Marlowe - Example Problems Philip Marlowe Gerald Mohr as Philip Marlowe. Philip Marlowe is a fictional private eye created by Raymond Chandler in a series of detective novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye . Marlowe first appeared in the short story "Finger Man," published in 1934.

In this early appearance, however, Chandler had not yet developed the elaborate similes which were to become his trademark, and Marlowe is hard to distinguish from Chandler's other short fiction characters, such as Johnny Dalmas. Furthermore, whereas in the later novels, Marlowe inhabits Los Angeles, "Finger Man" is set in a fictional city called San Angelo. Marlowe's character is typical of a genre of hardboiled crime fiction that originated with Dashiell Hammett and Black Mask magazine in the 1920s where the private eye is a pessimistic and cynical observer of a corrupt society. Yet the enduring appeal of Marlowe and other hardboiled dick like Hammett's Sam Spade lies in their tarnished idealism. Underneath the wisecracking, hard drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe is quietly contemplative and philosophical. Marlowe enjoys chess and poetry . While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not bamboozled by the genre's usual Femme fatales , like Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep .

As Chandler wrote about his detective ideal in general, "I think he might seduce a duchess, and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin." Contents

Question: In which novel does fictional private eye Philip Marlowe first appear?
Answer: The Big Sleep