Further Reading

Quicklinks: The Works of Raymond Chandler | For More on Raymond Chandler | Online Articles | Nonfiction | Recommended Reading for Super Sleuthing Kids and Teens

The Works of Raymond Chandler

Philip Marlowe Series

• The Big Sleep, Alfred A. Knopf, 1939
• Farewell, My Lovely, Alfred A. Knopf, 1940
• The High Window, Alfred A. Knopf, 1942
• The Lady in the Lake, Alfred A. Knopf, 1943
• The Little Sister, Houghton Mifflin, 1949
• The Long Goodbye, Houghton Mifflin, 1954
• Playback, Houghton Mifflin, 1958
• Poodle Springs (completed by Robert B. Parker), Putnam, 1989

Screenplays

• Double Indemnity, 1944 (Paramount)
• And No Tomorrow, 1944 (Paramount)
• The Unseen, 1945 (Paramount)
• The Blue Dahlia, 1946 (Paramount)
• The Innocent Mrs. Duff, 1946 (Paramount, unproduced)
• Playback, 1948 (Universal, unproduced)
• Strangers on a Train, 1951 (Warner Brothers)

Short Stories

In Black Mask:

• “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” (December 1933)
• “Smart-Aleck Kill” (July 1934)
• “Finger Man” (October 1934)
• “Killer in the Rain” (January 1935)
• “Nevada Gas” (June 1935)
• “Spanish Blood” (November 1935)
• “Guns at Cyrano’s” (January 1936)
• “The Man Who Liked Dogs” (March 1936)
• “Goldfish” (June 1936)
• “The Curtain” (September 1936)
• “Try the Girl” (January 1937)

In Dime Detective Magazine:

• “Mandarin’s Jade” (November 1937)
• “Red Wind” (January 1938)
• “The King in Yellow” (March 1938)
• “Bay City Blues” (June 1938)
• “The Lady in the Lake” (January 1939)
• “Pearls Are a Nuisance” (April 1939)
• “Trouble Is My Business” (August 1939)

Short Story Collections

• Five Murderers, Avon, 1944
• Five Sinister Characters, Avon, 1945
• Fingerman and Other Stories, Avon, 1947
• The Simple Art of Murder, Houghton Mifflin, 1950
• Killer in the Rain, Houghton Mifflin, 1964

Special thanks to Vintage Books.

For More on Raymond Chandler

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved
By Judith Freeman
Pantheon, 2007

Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life: A Compendium of Quotes by Raymond Chandler
Edited by Martin Asher
Alfred A. Knopf, 2005

The Raymond Chandler Papers
Edited by Frank MacShane and Tom Hiney
Grove Press, 2002

Raymond Chandler: A Biography
By Tom Hiney
Grove Press, 1999

Raymond Chandler Speaking
Edited by by Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley Walker
University of California Press, 1997

The Life of Raymond Chandler
By Frank MacShane
G.K. Hall and Co., 1976

Chandler Before Marlowe: Raymond Chandler’s Early Prose and Poetry, 1908-1912
Edited by Matthew J. Brucolli
University of South Carolina Press, 1973

Online Articles

Unless otherwise noted, these resources are available on all Chicago Public Library computers and on other computers with your Chicago Public Library card.

“Chandler’s Waste Land”
By Jonathan P. Eburne
Studies in the Novel 35, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 366-382
Effects of T.S. Eliot on Chandler.

“Fade-Out on Raymond Chandler”
By Richard S. Lochte
Chicago Tribune. December 14, 1969: p. 60
Chandler’s time in Hollywood.

“The Long Goodbye”
Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition
Salem Press, 2000
Analysis of The Long Goodbye. Careful, contains spoilers.

“The End of the Trail: The American West of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler”
By Joseph C. Porter
The Western Historical Quarterly 6, no. 4 (October 1975): 411-424
The American West in literature.
Available at all Chicago Public Library locations.

“Raymond Chandler”
Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: The Age of Maturity, 1929-1941
Gale Research, 1989
An in-depth profile of Chandler.

“The Long Goodbye”
By Gene Siskel
Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1973: p. B4
Siskel review of the Robert Altman movie.

Nonfiction

American Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era
By David Cochran
Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000

The Black Lizard Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age—The ’20s, ’30s & ’40s
By Otto Penzler
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2007

Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir
By Sheri Chinen Biesen
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005

Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books
By H.R.F. Keating
Carroll & Graf, 1996

Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s
By James M. Cain
Penguin Books, 1997

The Crown Crime Companion: The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time/Selected by the Mystery Writers of America
Annotated by Otto Penzler; compiled by Mickey Friedman
Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1995

Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective
By Jon Tuska
Greenwood Press, 1984

Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir
By Eddie Muller
St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998

Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir
By Eddie Muller
Regan Books, 2002

The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir
By Foster Hirsch
Da Capo Press, 2001

Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, Third Edition
By Alain Silver
Overlook TP, 1993

Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959
By Michael F. Keaney
McFarland, 2003

Heartbreak and Vine: The Fate of Hardboiled Writers in Hollywood
By Woody Haut
Serpent’s Tail, 2002

L.A. Noir: The City as Character
By Alain Silver and James Ursini
Santa Monica Press, 2005

More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts
By James Naremore
University of California Press, 2008

Murderous Schemes: An Anthology of Classic Detective
Stories edited by Donald E. Westlake
Oxford University Press, 1996

Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War
By Woody Haut
Serpent’s Tail, 1995

Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City
By Nicholas Christopher
Shoemaker & Hoard, 2006

Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them: Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir
By John T. Irwin
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006

Whodunit?: A Who’s Who in Crime and Mystery
Writing by Rosemary Herbert
Oxford University Press, USA, 2003

Recommended Reading for Super Sleuthing Kids and Teens

Raymond Chandler has Marlowe, Dashiell Hammett has Spade, and have we got some characters for you! In each of these books it’s the young aspiring detectives who save the day, so whether you fancy yourself Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown, team up with some of these gumshoes and see if you can solve the mystery before they do.

• Two Chicago classmates partnered on a school art project, Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay, use patterns and puzzles, keen observation of suspicious characters and analysis of mysterious events to successfully solve an international art scandal in Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Brett Helquist. Their adventures continue as they fight to save the Robie House in The Wright 3. (Scholastic, ages 9-14)
• When your father is a police officer and your mother a private investigator, things are bound to be interesting around the house, as curious and intrepid Herculeah Jones knows very well heading Down the Dark Stairs and to Death’s Door to solve crime in her series by Betsy Byars. (Viking/Sleuth, ages 9-12)
• As the “youngest P.I. on the planet,” 12-year-old Fletcher Moon graduates from an online detective course and quickly gets down to business tackling Half-Moon Investigations in this hilarious Irish story by Eoin Colfer. (Hyperion/Miramax, ages 11-13)
• It’s only Murder, My Tweet, so take The Big Nap, grab The Malted Falcon and then head down to Key Lardo because This Gum is for Hire in the hilarious Chet “Trouble Is My Beeswax” Gecko series by Bruce Hale. And psssst … The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse. (Harcourt, ages 8-11)
• Identity theft is the (designer) name and style is the game when Bennett Madison’s Lulu, the anti-Nancy Drew, is on the case, and no one, from purse snatchers to homicidal maniacs, are safe when Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls. (Razorbill/Sleuth, ages 13 and up)
• In Acceleration, by Graham McNamee, Duncan reads a leather-bound book with yellow-edged pages from the subway lost and found and finds himself trying to stop a killer named Roach with the help of his friends, and not the police. (Wendy Lamb, ages 13 and up)
• With a mystery-writing mother, murder is nothing new to Jenny Jakes, but it’s a different story, and not quite as palatable, when death hits a little too close to home in Murdered, My Sweet by Joan Lowery Nixon. (Delacorte, ages 12 and up)
• What happened to The Body of Christopher Creed? Popular football player Torey Adams is determined to uncover the tragedy that befell the class outcast, but even as his search leads him to a burial ground his own life is drastically affected in this page-turner by Carol Plum-Ucci. (Harcourt, ages 14 and up)
• Cynthia Rylant’s High Rise Private Eyes series pits ace detectives Bunny Brown and Jack Jones against a plethora of urban unsolvables such as The Case of the Puzzling Possum, The Case of the Climbing Cat and The Case of the Desperate Duck. (Greenwillow, ages 4-8)
• Charlie’s Point of View relies mostly on hearing, keen intuition and our hero’s best friend, Bernadette, as Charlie, a blind and brave seventh-grader, attempts to clear his father’s name by revealing the true identity of a big city bank robber in this funny and suspenseful tale by Richard Scrimger. (Dutton/Sleuth, ages 11-13)
• Teens Hunter and Jen get swept into the New York world of advertising in So Yesterday, a hip and intriguing mystery novel about consumerism by Scott Westerfield. (Razorbill, ages 13 and up)
• Intrepid Sammy keeps an eye on the neighborhood from her home base in her grandmother’s senior citizen’s home and gets to the bottom of anything that goes wrong in such titles as Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief and Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things by Wendelin Van Draanen. (Knopf, ages 10-13)
• Using his Secret Identity, Nolan Shredderman successfully exposes the fifth-grade bullies and foils the Attack of the Tagger in the fast-paced series by Wendelin Van Draanen with illustrations by Brian Biggs. (Knopf, ages 9-12)