The only complete collection of shorter fiction by the undisputed master of detective literature, assembled here for the first time in one volume, includes stories unavailable for decades. When Raymond Chandler turned to writing at the age of forty-five, he began by publishing in pulp magazines such as Black Mask before later writing his famous novels. In these stories Chandler honed his art and developed his uniquely vivid underworld, peopled with good cops and bad cops, informers and...
'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.' Los Angeles Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound General Sternwood to discover who is blackmailing him. A broken, weary old man, Sternwood just wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. However, with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy...