Raymond Chandler: Collected Stories (Everyman's Library)

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) Chicago born spent his formative years in England attending prestigious English prep school. He served in the British Armed Forces in World War I and later emigrated to America settling for life in Los Angeles (as Ross MacDonald put it he wrote like a slumming angel on the streets of L.A.) After he left his position as an oil executive he devoted his life to writing turning out great novels such as the Big Sleep, Farwell My Lovely and the Long Goodbye. Most of his novels were filmed with such stalwarts as Bogart and Dick Powell playing Chandler's stoic hero Philip Marlowe private detective. This outstanding Everyman's Library edition of his 25 short stories contains his 25 short stories. It is a doorstopper of a book weighing in at 1300 pages! Nevertheless these tough tails of gun totting molls and gangsters with murders and shootouts galore will entertain you! We get nocturnal chases through the tough streets of Depression era Los Angeles as we discover the secrets of the rich and famous and dead! All of the stories are well worth reading. My personal favorites are The Brass Gate (atypically set in London), The Lady in the Lake, The Man Who Loved Dogs, Curtain and Spanish Blood. Several scenes from the stories were later used by movie directors such as Howard Hawks on the big screen. Chandler is an outstanding writer and his scene setting is very detailed. We grasp life in Chandler's long vanished Southern California. So smoke a pipe and sip a cool one as these stories entertain you for hours of reading pleasure!

“Raymond Chandler: Collected Stories” contains all of the 25 short stories that Chandler wrote. They are very enjoyable. Each story is from around 30 to around 60 pages long. Chandler (1888-1959) also published seven full-length novels during his lifetime. His eighth was completed and published by Robert B. Parker after his death. Chandler cannibalized some of his short stories, such as combining two of his short stories to produce a full-length novel. He did so, for example, with “The Big Sleep,” combining the two short stories “Killer in the rain” (published in 1935) and “The Curtain” (published in 1936); and also inserted small parts of “Finger Man” and “Mandarin Jade.” “The Big Sleep,” a reference to Philip Marlowe’s attitude to death, was published in 1939 as his first novel as well as the first hard-boil crime novel with hard-nosed private detective Philip Marlowe. All of his novels, with the sole exception of his last novel Playback, published in 1958, were made into movies, some more than once. Chandler is considered by many to be the founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. He stressed the atmosphere of the events rather than the plot.

I loved The Long Goodbye and I wanted to read his shorter stories. Chandler’s descriptions are what I love most, and these stories have lots of the colorful language he’s known for. I will say that his short stories are not short. They are more like short novels. If you love Raymond Chandler, you should read this beautifully bound collection. If you aren’t familiar with Raymond Chandler, this collection is very representative of his work.

Chandler is one of my favorite authors of all time. I bought this book for the stories left out of the Library of America two volume edition of his major works. Frank McShane noted that several short stories were "cannibalized" for Chandler's novels and that Chandler wished these stories to not be published. Sorry Mr. Chandler, but I want to read every piece of fiction you have written that I can get my hands on.I can see that some of these stories are not Chandler's best, just as I can tell what novel the stories were used in and the changes he made in "cannibalizing' them. Possibly Chandler saw some of these stories as weak, but what ever the reason they are all here, along with all the other short stories that are regularly published.Unfortunately this makes for a big, heavy volume. I would appreciate the publishers of books like this making them in to two volumes and I would gladly pay the extra cost.Even though the book is physically too large it is well bound and includes a little ribbon book mark sewed or glued into the binding. Nice touch.

He is the most descriptive author I’ve ever read. If you’re love a great noir in the form of pen and ink: Ray Chandler will have us there; put you in the situation and you just might duck a few punches. Chandler truly is that effective.I'm not happy with the thin "hard cover" board. A hard cover is supposed to be close to unyielding. Also, the page marker is cheep, thin and flimsy and because of that, just not including it would have been a better option toward a fine quality binder board. I'm not very surprised at the price drop which has happened throughout the years if the reason is gift or family quality materials are no longer important as they once were, and not so very long ago.Regardless, the stories; the words as well as the all Inclusive compilation of stories is important enough to readers of fine literature, everywhere. I highly recommend this copy.

An excellent collection. My only quibble is with the introduction. It's a fine essay about Chandler's novels, despite the fact that it throws considerable shade on The Long Goodbye, which I particularly enjoy, but I get where the author is coming from and everyone is entitled to an opinion. The point is, this is a collection of Chandler's short fiction, not his novels, so the introduction provides no context for what follows and seems out of place. The chronology that is provided also glosses over Chandler's writing of his short fiction as well. For example, there is no mention of his writing The Pencil in the chronology, so I had to consult the chronology that's provided in the Library of America collection for a little extra context on the story. As I said though, this is a minor quibble and overall this is a fantastic and necessary collection of very high quality.

Raymond Chandler is still the king of the hard boiled genre. Great book. A complete collection of his short fiction. You don't get any better.

Amazing to read and realise how the classic 'long' stories came into being.

Chandler in depth. The more general reader will do better to read the seven novels.

If you like Raymond Chandler you'll love this compendium

Do you see Chandler as great literature, or just as an enjoyable read? Personally, I don't find the two mutually exclusive, but this weighty tome from Everyman with an introduction by Oxford emeritus Professor John Bayley (and husband to Iris Murdoch) does everything it possibly can to put it in the literature camp, rather than the fun to read.I read all of the Philip Marlowe novels at least to some extent in the bath. The Penguin reprints are just right for that. This is something you can't do with the Collected Stories. Hardcover, with more than 1300 pages of beautifully printed fine paper, you wouldn't want to hold this up for long, and you wouldn't dare to get it wet. More to the point, Bayley's introduction takes Chandler as seriously as it is possible to take him, and is supported by an academic bibliography and a 12 page chronology. Mercifully, there is no index.The other thing that marks this out as 'serious' rather than 'fun' is that, in the original stories, the character who becomes Marlowe either has no name, or has a different name. In subsequent republications (authorised by Chandler), they all become Marlowe. This book sticks to the original published version, so that the first one that is about Marlowe is Trouble is my business, 1,000 pages in.There's no doubt in my mind that Chandler created great literature, and he did this in the awareness not only of Holmes and Spade, but also of TS Eliot and other literary figures. But my feeling is that this Everyman collection just takes a little bit too much of the fun out of it.Nonetheless, Bayley's introduction is very insightful, and there is no other convenient way of acquiring all of the short stories.Definitely one for the completists. If that's not you, then you might want to read the two Penguin collections,  Killer in the Rain: "The Man Who Liked Dogs"; "The Curtain"; "Try the Girl"; "Mandarin's Jade"; "Bay City Blues"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "No Crime in the Mountains"  and  Trouble is My Business , which will give you most of the stories in a more compact form that also matches the current Penguin collection. Killer in the Rain: "The Man Who Liked Dogs"; "The Curtain"; "Try the Girl"; "Mandarin's Jade"; "Bay City Blues"; "The Lady in the Lake"; "No Crime in the Mountains"Trouble is My Business

If you have never read a single story by Raymond Chandler then what have you been doing with your life, these are simply the best crime fiction stories ever written. They were orginally written for Pulp Fiction magazines such as "The Black Mask" during the 1930's and follow Chandlers advice to crime writers perfectly I.E. "if in doubt have a man enter the room with a machine gun".This hard back edition is the first time that all of the short stories have been presented in a single volume and include such favourites as Red Wind, Goldfish, Blackmailers don't shoot, The king in yellow and Pearls are a nusiance. If there is one fault with this book it is that at over 1300 pages it is a little heavy to carry around with you when out and about.Once you have finished this volume I would advise all of his novels contained in the following volumes by the same publiser The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback (Everyman's Library classics)The Big Sleep (Everyman's Library classics)The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback (Everyman's Library classics)The Big Sleep (Everyman's Library classics)