Readings.com.au: Raymond Chandler

The High Window

Philip Marlowe's client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. Easy. Probably too easy. Unfortunately, each time the Doubloon pops up, so does a murder. That's unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA gets cops' noses out of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to end up in jail – or worse, in a box in the ground.

Big Sleep And Farewell My Lovely

These two classic novels featuring private eye Philip Marlowe made Raymond Chandler's name synonymous with America's hard-boiled school of crime fiction. The Big Sleep was an instant success when first published in 1939. It centers around a paralyzed California millionaire with two psychopathic daughters; he involves Marlowe in a case of blackmail that turns into murder.

Farewell My Lovely, which Chandler regarded as his finest work, came out the following year. It has Marlowe dealing with the Los Angeles gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women. "Chandler writes like a slumming angel and invests the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence," said Ross Macdonald. And George V. Higgins wrote: "Chandler is fun to read. He's as bleak as tundra, and his dirtbag characters far outnumber his stellar citizens, but Philip Marlowe is a laconic tour guide through a zoo of truly interesting animals."

Lady In The Lake The Little Sister The Long Goodby Payback

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Big Sleep Audio

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Lady In The Lake Audio

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The Lady In The Lake

A woman has been reported missing to detective Marlowe and a corpse is found in the lake. Yet it is not the body of the missing person, but that of one of her neighbours. Now Marlowe's on the trail of a killer, who leads him out of smoggy LA all the way to a murky mountain lake . . .

Farewell My Lovely

Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married – until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe's search for Velma turns up plenty of dangerous gangsters with a nasty habit of shooting first and talking later. And soon what started as a search for a missing person becomes a matter of life and death . . .

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep is the definitive hardboiled detective story and Philip Marlowe the perfect expression of the cynical, world-weary gumshoe. Hired by the crippled General Sternwood to shake off a blackmailer, Marlowe also has to deal with the general's two rebellious daughters, the gamblers and pornographers they run with and, soon enough, some inconvenient murders. Chandler's LA and the gutter-life that populate it made crime fiction what it is today and remain unmatched.

The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely and The High Window

Raymond Chandler’s first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction.

The Big Sleep, Chandler’s first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralyzed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder. In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women. In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in the tangled affairs of a dead coin collector.

In all three novels, Chandler’s hard-edged prose, colorful characters, vivid vernacular, and, above all, his enigmatic loner of a hero, enduringly establish his claim not only to the heights of his chosen genre but to the pantheon of literary art.

The Long Goodbye

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

Farewell My Lovely

Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a quickie divorce and marry a Casanova-wannabe named Chris Lavery. Or so the note she left her husband insisted. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with a flea lodged firmly in his ear. But when Marlowe next encounters Lavery, he's denying nothing – on account of the two bullet holes in his heart. Now Marlowe's on the trail of a killer, who leads him out of smoggy LA all the way to a murky mountain lake …

The Little Sister

Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or least ways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable – though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet. You see, Orrin's trail leads Marlowe to luscious movie starlets, uppity gangsters, suspicious cops and corpses with ice picks jammed in their necks. When trouble comes calling, sometimes it's best to pretend to be out…

The Big Sleep

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out – and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse …

The Lady In The Lake

Farewell My Lovely (Audio CD)

Full cast dramatisation of the classic Philip Marlowe novel.

Ed Bishop stars as Philip Marlowe in this powerfully atmospheric dramatisation of Raymond Chandlerâ€™s novel about the cynical, world-weary, wise-cracking shamus whose honesty in a dishonest world sent him down the mean streets again and again in search of some kind of justice.

At six feet ﬁve, Moose Malloy was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on angel food and about as dangerous. But Marlowe never was the kind of guy to walk away from trouble when it slapped him in the face, and Moose's girl had disappeared, a mere eight years ago. All Marlowe had to do was ﬁnd her...

Raymond Chandler's trademark laconic style has inﬂuenced generations of crime writers and he is still widely regarded as master of the genre.

Trouble Is My Business

This collection of five short stories about tough-talking private eyes includes John Dalmas but excludes Marlowe.

Playback

Marlow is being paid to follow a sad-looking redhead named Eleanor King. Or is she called Betty Mayfield or Mrs Kinsolving? And what is the man with the swift left hook holding over her? Even in a nice little town like Esmerelda there's no shortage of PIs, cops and bellhops to make a case more difficult, and Marlowe's over developed sense of justice is getting him into trouble again. Still, at least there's a blonde with a snooty look and a great pair of legs to take the sting out of things...

The Big Sleep: Limited Edition Leather Bound Classic

Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939. 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.

Penguin commissioned designer Bill Amberg to create a series of fine leather bound classics. Originally published at $150, most of the ttiles are now out of print and destined to become collectors pieces. A wonderful novel in a sumptuous volume...don't delay we have very limited stock.

The Notebooks Of Raymond Chandler

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The Big Sleep And Other Novels

Raymond Chandler created the fast-talking, trouble-seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939. 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 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 Chandler's brilliant epitaph, The Long Good-Bye.
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards that others still try to attain.'
Sunday Times

Lady In The Lake And Other Novels

Philip Marlowe, the original hard-boiled private eye, returns to walk the mean streets of the American underworld again in these three classic novels. In The Lady in the Lake a business tycoon sets Marlowe on the hunt for some very important lost property – a flighty young wife, who proves murder to find. A wealthy widow sends the wisecracking detective on another trail in The High Window, this time to find a jinxed gold doubloon. The Little Sister is Chandler's late, great story of a seemingly prim young woman who proves that trouble can come in the most innocent of guises, and who has Marlowe hooked on one of his most beguiling cases.

The Big Sleep

Published in 1939, this is Raymond Chandler's first novel and features Philip Marlowe, the neat, clean, shaved and sober man who was everything the well-dressed detective should be. Raymond Chandler wrote three other classic novels: Farewell my Lovely, The Lady in the Lake and The Long Goodbye, all of which feature Philip Marlowe. He also wrote the screenplays for Double Indemnity and The Blue Dahlia both of which were nominated for an Oscar.

Farewell My Lovely

A warm day on Central Avenue, and Philip Marlowe's hunch about the man beside him is as vague as the heatwaves that dance above the sidewalk. The way business is looking, even a hunch is enough. Moose Malloy stands six five and one-half and weighs two hundred and sixty-four pounds, without his necktie. After eight years in the pen, he wants Little Velma back, and no cops or mobsters are ready to stand in his way. Marlowe's tough enough for the ride, but he can't help thinking – there's never been a happy ending to the story of beauty and the beast...
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Philip Marlowe stalked the tawdry neon wilderness of Southern California. There Raymond Chandler's creation became the most famous fictional detective since Sherlock Holmes, often imitated, never bettered. Read the complete Marlowe novels in Penguin paperback.

High Window

There was a stifling scent of summer on the Pasadena morning when he first called on Mrs Elizabeth Bright Murdock. Later Marlowe couldn't work out which was worse: air you couldn't breathe, or a client who didn't tell you the story. The job was to find a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. Easy. Probably too easy. Each time the Doubloon pops up, so does a murder. Soon Marlowe's got a full-scale tragedy on his hands...
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Philip Marlowe stalked the tawdry neon wilderness of Southern California. There Raymond Chandler's creation became the most famous fictional detective since Sherlock Holmes; often imitated, never bettered. Read the complete Marlowe novels in Penguin paperback.

Little Sister

Even on a bright spring California morning, Philip Marlowe was partway inclined to think the little sister pathetic. But was it all an act? Because from the moment Orfamay Quest palpitates edgily into his office, Marlowe finds himself hooked. The barb drags him as far as Bay City, and some very painful encounters with movie stars, gangsters and police. But by then Marlowe would have willingly followed her to the ends of the earth...
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Philip Marlowe stalked the tawdry neon wilderness of southern California. There Raymond Chandler's creation became the most famous fictional detective since Sherlock Holmes, often imitated, never bettered. Read the complete Marlowe novels in Penguin paperback.

Lady In The Lake

A woman has been reported missing to detective Marlowe and a corpse is found in the lake. Yet it is not the body of the missing person, but that of one of her neighbours. It takes another three corpses before Marlowe winds up the affairs of a woman who is set on smashing links with her past.

Killer In The Rain

First published in the Thirties in Black Mask, these eight stories see Chandler already master of his art. Killer in the Rain, The Curtain, Bay City Blues – all of them come charged with the authentic smell of fear that caused Elizabeth Bowen to acclaim Chandler as 'not just one more detective writer – he is a craftsman so brilliant, he has an imagination so wholly original, that no consideration of modern American literature ought, I think, to exclude him'.
'Anything he writes about grips the mind from the first sentence. It is a spare, finished performance: full of life and character: as tense as a tiger, springing into action.'
Daily Telegraph

'Chandler is a serious writer, an original stylist.'
Anthony Burgess