American motion picture screen writer and author of detective fiction. Chandler began writing stories for crime fiction magazine Black Mask, which also published Dashiell Hammett's stories. He is best known for his tough but honest private detective Philip Marlowe, the name originating from English 1500th century writer Christopher Marlowe, who had a violent temper. As representative and master of hard-

boiled school of crime fiction, Chandler criticized classical puzzle writers for their lack of realism. His most famous target in much quoted essay The Simple Art of Murder (1944) was A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery.

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago, but he grew up in England after the divorce of his parents. He attended Dulwich College Preparatory School in London, and studied then also in France and Germany. He worked as a teacher at Dulwich and a journalist for the Daily Express and Western Gazette. Before returning to the United States in 1912, Chandler published twenty-seven poems and his first story, 'The Rose-Leaf Romance.' Back in America he worked in St. Louis, then on a ranch, in a sporting goods firm, and as a bookkeeper in a creamery. During the World War I he served in the Canadian Army (1917-18) and was later transferred to the Royal Air Force (1918-19). In 1924 he married 18-years older Pearl Cecily Hurlburt, twice married and divorced. When she wed Chandler she was fifty-three, but looked far younger and listed her age as forty-three.

After the war Chandler worked in a bank in San Francisco, wrote for the Daily Express, and become then a bookkeeper and auditor for Dabney Oil Syndicate from 1922 to 1932. When Chandler lost his job during the Great Depression - he was fired for drinking and absenteeism - he began writing stories for Black Mask Magazine. At the age of forty-five, with the support of his wife, Chandler devoted himself entirely to writing. He prepared himself for his first submission by carefully studying Erle Stanley Gardner and other representatives of pulp fiction, and spent five months writing his first story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot. It appeared in December 1933 in Black Mask, the foremost among magazines publishing in the hard-boiled school.

Chandler was a slow writer. Between 1933 and 1939 he produced a total of nineteen pulp stories, eleven in Black Mask, seven in Dime Detective, one in Detective Fiction Weekly. Unlike most of his pulp-writing colleagues, Chandler tried to expand the limits of the pulp formula to more ambitious and humane direction. His fourth published story, Killer in the Rain, was used in THE BIG SLEEP (1939), Chandler's first novel. The story introduced Philip Marlowe, a 38-year-old P.I., a man of honor and a modern day knight with a college education. In his role as narrator, Marlowe moves through the criminal world and social elite - which are sometimes the same - of Los Angeles in the 1930s, helps General Sternwood, a paralyzed California millionaire from heartbreak, by rescuing his daughter from a potentially embarrassing blackmail scheme. The story ends in resigned contemplation: "What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump of in a marble tower on top of a high hill? ... you were not bothered by things like that. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell..." In FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1940) Marlowe searches for an ex-convict Moose Malloy a missing girl friend, Velma Valento. Velma is described by Moose as "cute as lace pants," and during his investigation Marlowe deals with Los Angeles' gambling circuit, a murder, and three potentially deadly women.

His next novel, THE HIGH WINDOW (1942), Chandler considered his worst. It was written at the same time as THE LADY IN THE LAKE (1943), which Ross Macdonald included in his list of favorites. Chandler's writing had already excited interest in the film community, and for Double Indemnity (1944) Chandler and the director Billy Wilder worked together. In 1946 Chandler received Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for screenplay, and in 1954 for novel. When Warner Brothers was making The Big Sleep (1946), Chandler discussed the story with the screenwriters, Leigh Brackett and William Faulkner, director Howard Hawks, and star Humphrey Bogart. He even wrote a new ending which was not used.

THE LITTLE SISTER (1949), which included the author's opinions about Hollywood, received negative reviews. The story opens in the usual way: "'Is this Mr Marlowe, the detective?' It was a small, rather hurried, little-girlish voice. I said it was Mr Marlowe, the detective. 'How much you charge for your services, Mr Marlowe?'" The sixth novel in the series, THE LONG GOODBYE (1953), has been admired by many critics. Marlowe's long and complicated investigation begins when he helps Terry Lennox, sitting drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith. Marlowe's willingness to forgive in his own way his friends, who have betrayed him, differs completely from the attitude of Mike Hammer, who is ready to kill and never turns his other cheek. In the end Marlowe tells Terry: "You're a very sweet guy in a lot of ways. I'm not judging you. I never did. It is just that you're not here anymore. You're long gone.You've got nice clothes and perfume and you're as elegant as a fifty-dollar whore."

When his wife died in 1954 Chandler was devastated. He sailed for England and met Jessica Tyndale, a banker, on board, and they became close. PLAYBACK, Chandler's last finished novel, appeared in 1958. In the story Marlowe renews his affair with Linda Loring, who made her first appearance in The Long Goodbye. During the writing process Helga Greene become Chandler's literary agent. He and Helga Greene were induced by Ian Fleming to travel to Capri, and to interview Lucky Luciano along the way in Naples. Chandler essay 'My Friend Luco' was not published. In 1959 Helga flew to California, and Chandler proposed her from his hospital bed. Chandler died on March 26, 1959. His unfinished novel POODLE SPRING was completed by Robert B. Parker, who has also written a sequel to The Big Sleep, entitled PERCHANCE TO DREAM (1990). In 1998 the playwright Tom Stoppard wrote a screenplay for Poodle Springs, which was made into a television movie. Parker's doctoral dissertation was The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality: A Study of the Private Eye in the Novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald (1970). Parker's own Boston private eye Spenser combines Marlowe's knightly moral code and Archer's social conscience.

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