So many Marlowes ... a centennial tribute anthology for Raymond Chandler ...

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 20^th century’s most enduring and beloved characters.”  So, it is not just a random collection of ‘Marlowe’ stories. 

I have read five stories so far, and I enjoyed them.  I have read only two Chandler novels, Farewell, My Lovely and The Big Sleep, and some short stories, and so, I am yet to reach the stage where I can say I am a die-hard fan of Marlowe.  I approach each story independently and I don’t have enough knowledge to compare the writers’ skills with Chandler’s or their Marlowes with ‘the’ Marlowe.  Going by the sheer variety available in this volume, there is enough stuff here to keep seasoned Marlowe-ites seriously engaged in debates and discussions for quite some time.