The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback

Description

Library Journal

Raymond Chandler can’t be credited with inventing the hard-boiled private-eye genre, but he undeniably perfected it—and since his death in 1959, no one has done it better.

These new editions in the Everyman’s Library collect the full canon of Chandler’s work in both short-story and novel form. Collected Stories gathers, for the first time, all of Chandler’s short fiction, including stories long out of print, for a total of 25.

Some of these stories will be familiar to readers as earlier versions later rewritten and woven into the Philip Marlowe novels. Others—such as “The King in Yellow”—feature different detectives, including Steve Grace, who appeared only once.

The novels remain available individually, but when combined with the Collected Stories volume, they form a handsome and reasonably priced hardcover set. All three volumes include scholarly introductions.

Chandler’s influence continues to resonate throughout contemporary PI fiction. Every modern sleuth—from Nathan Heller to Easy Rawlins—who does the right thing not because it’s the law or because he’s being paid, but because it’s the right thing, traces his lineage back to Marlowe.

Essential for all mystery collections.

—Copyright © 2002 Cahners Business Information