I had managed to collect all of Hammett’s novels and I
wanted to see if any used Chandler novels were available with dealstar on
amazon. Oh, lots were available, but
while I was searching for Chandler novels the short story collections of both
Chandler and Hammett caught my attention.
The ‘short story’ frenzy cooled down once the books were in the bag (…
they are here). And I went back to
ogling at Chandler novels. While this
ogling was going on, I kept bumping into this book. It didn’t look like a novel by Chandler. And going by the title, I thought this book
was a sort of an imagined biography of Philip Marlowe, the fictional detective
created by Chandler. After a while my
curiosity got the better of me (as it often does when it comes to books …) and I
wanted to take a better and closer look at this book.
And I am glad I was curious.
As I read about the book, I realized that behind the innocuous and
deceptively simple title, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, hides
a real gem! Once this realization
dawned, then it was smooth sailing.
This book has 25 ‘Marlowe’ stories written by 25 well-known
detective and mystery story writers. It
is a sort of a centenary tribute to Raymond Chandler, conceived and edited by
Byron Preiss, with the consent of the Raymond Chandler Estate. Some of the leading names of the detective
and mystery genre like Sara Paretsky (detective V I Warshawski series), Robert
B. Parker (detective Spenser series), Simon Brett (Fethering mysteries and
Charles Paris detective novels), Robert Crais (Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels),
Eric Van Lustbader, Roger L. Simon (the Moses Wine series), Max Allan Collins
(private detective Nathan Heller series among others), and other equally
prominent writers have written a ‘Marlowe’ story each for this volume. Each writer has also written a brief
‘afterword’ to their story telling us how Chandler has influenced his/her own
work/s. In case you long for the Master
himself, Chandler signs off the collection with his last Marlowe story, The
Pencil.
Every story has an exclusive and expressive ‘companion’
graphic illustration accompanying it.
Some of America’s renowned graphic artists and illustrators – John
Martinez, Dennis Ziemienski, Paul Rivoche, and Javier Romero – have made these
sketches.
Each story is set at a particular year and the stories are
arranged chronologically to run through Marlowe’s career as a private detective
from 1935 to 1960, to reveal, as the blurb says, “the missing life history and detective adventures of Philip Marlowe,
one of the 20th century’s most enduring and beloved characters.” So, it is not just a random collection of
‘Marlowe’ stories.
