Flashback Friday: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

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If you love Robert B. Parker's Spenser, get acquainted with Philip Marlowe, the inspiration behind Parker's creation.

Raymond Chandler is widely considered the successor to Dashiell Hammett as the world's premier hard-boiled detective fiction writer. Some say that Chandler's character, Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, is the archetypal private eye, more iconic and more enduring than any of the private eye characters created by not only Hammett, but the likes of Ross MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane.

Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, and Robert B. Parker's Spenser, is a man of principle. Despite his tough exterior and rough manners, Philip Marlowe follows a code of honor that stands out as endearingly old-fashioned in a corrupt, often vicious, world. Chandler's novels can be considered morality tales. Beneath all the roughhousing and sexual tension can be detected a critique of American society, run by greed and big money, that makes men like Marlowe necessary.

Chandler's writing is characterized by arresting lines that set a scene, the throwaway wisecrack, novel descriptions of dead men, and creative accounts of what it's like to take a bullet and or have a punch land square on your face. Most of all though, the greatness of Chandler is found in his wonderful dialogue. Perhaps no one in real life ever talked that concisely and cleverly, but when you read it you hope maybe they did.

This week, Flashback Friday focuses on Chandler's most famous novel, and his first, The Big Sleep (1939), a notoriously mixed-up story, which nonetheless rewards successive readings. If you aren't familiar with the hard-boiled tradition, this is the novel to plunge into to get a sense of the genre's possibilities and difficulties.

In The Big Sleep, a dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

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Flashback Friday: Better Corpses (A Race Williams Detective Story)

$1.99 Kindle Edition

Hard-boiled fiction, is the tough, unsentimental style of American crime fiction writing that brought a new tone of earthy realism or naturalism to the field of detective fiction. 

Hard-boiled detectives were characters who lived on the mean streets of cities where fighting, drinking, swearing, poverty, and death were all part of life.

To some degree, hard-boiled detective fiction was fostered by the rising crime and gangster activity caused by Prohibition and later the Great Depression. Hard-boiled fiction used graphic violence, colorful but often sleazy urban backgrounds, and fast-paced, slangy dialogue.

Credit for the invention of the genre is often given to Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective and contributor to the pulp magazines, best known for his masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon (1930), which introduced Sam Spade, his most famous sleuth. But, it was actually  Carroll John Daly (1889-1958) who created the first hard-boiled detective in his 1922 story The False Burton Combs.

Daly's most famous detective, Race Williams, was the prototypical hardboiled detective. Williams was made up of equal doses of street toughness and quick thinking action. Race always managed to escape impossible situations, usually by shooting his way out of them. Race Williams is a hard-boiled character worthy to be placed among the greats like Hammet's Sam Spade, and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. He is a gunman and a killer, but not a crook. Race Williams operates on the fringe between law and order and the criminal world.

Carroll John Daly was a regular contributor for the pulps, specifically the two leading detective magazines: Black Mask in the 1920s and Dime Detective in the 1930s. He was always a reader favorite for his action-packed stories and his quick wit and humor.

For the week's edition of Friday Flashback, we've chosen one of Carroll John Daly's best novels, Better Corpses, as the featured book. It's one of only a few of Daly's novels available on Amazon as an eBook. Better Corpses first published in 1940, is a classic hard-boiled detective murder mystery featuring private investigator Race Williams. Williams is called to the aid of Mary Morse, a wealthy heiress who is being threatened with blackmail by a ruthless gang.

Here is a sample of Daly's hard-boiled writing style from Better Corpses.

THEY were doing a poor business at the bar of the Royal Hotel. Just a couple of customers up front. I walked down the length of it, stood at the far end. When the bartender, who didn't have any drinkers to serve, kept wiping glasses, I tapped on the mahogany with a two-bit piece.

He looked annoyed, glared at me, then, wiping his hands on his apron, came slowly down. He didn't say in so many words that I should have come up, but he meant that. Yep, he put it all into the simple words:

"What'll it be?"

"Rye. Straight." And when he started carrying the sourpuss away with him, I added:

"And not the kind of whiskey that tosses you for a loss."

He walked leisurely back with the glass, pounded it on the bar, and stood watching me as I ran the liquor below my nose-made a face and let it roll. Then I spun him a quarter.

He stopped it by planting his index finger on the edge held it so, said:

"Thirty-five cents, Mister. You asked for good stuff."

"Sure," I agreed. "I asked for it, but I didn't get it. The two-bits stands."

He flipped the quarter into the air, caught it in the palm of his hand, leaned both his hands on the bar, said:

"You're looking for trouble, eh?"

"I'm always looking for trouble. Name of Williams-Race Williams. Now what?"

The ugly sneer went off his face as if you'd grabbed up the bar rag and rubbed it away. His hands came off the bar and he rocked back. The ruddy complexion wasn't so good either. And I liked it. Damned if I didn't. Conceited? Maybe. But it's nice to know you've built up a name along the old Avenue that saves you a lot of backroom brawls.

The bartender said, and a sweetness had crept into his voice; a sweetness that you'd never suspect from that hole in his face:

"I didn't recognize you, Williams. On the level, Race, I didn't place you." And after a gulp: "The boss said you'd give me the tip-off. Go through that door there-down the hall to the right, and up the stairs." He shot the quarter along the bar to me. "On the house, Race. It's an honor to have you drop in." 

I picked up the quarter. It was as good in my pocket as in his, and the liquor was lousy.

It's Flashback Friday at Best Crime Thriller Books

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Welcome to the first installment of "Flashback Friday" where each week we will be showcasing a great crime thriller from the past.

Unless you're a diehard fan of Raymond Chandler, and/or Robert B. Parker, you may have never heard of Poodle Springs, Chandler's seventh and last Philip Marlowe novel. I've been a fan of both for years and even then had never heard of the book until I stumbled across it quite by accident one Saturday afternoon while browsing the stacks at the Flagstaff, Arizona Barnes & Noble. If you've not heard it, there is an interesting story behind the book, especially the Robert B. Parker connection.

When Chandler died in 1959, he left behind the first four chapters of Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe's seventh caper. The book had the working title, The Poodle Springs Story. It wasn't until 1988, on the occasion of the centenary of Chandler's birth, that Robert B. Parker was asked by the estate of Raymond Chandler to complete the novel.

Parker did an exceptional job picking up the story from the slim opener and writing a thriller to rival his own bestselling Spenser novels. Poodle Springs reads just like any of Chandler's great Marlowe novels which shows just how much influence Chandler had on Parker's writing style.

In Poodle Springs, Marlowe is newly wed to wealthy Linda and at home in her luxurious house in Poodle Springs (pseudonym for Palm Springs) but refuses to be a kept man. He opens up a private eye shop in Poodle Springs on the second floor above a gas station. He is hired by a local gambler to trace Les Valentine, a photographer who has welshed on a $100,000 bet.

Marlowe questions the missing man's bibulous wife Muffy, daughter of a multi-millionaire. Muffy's vague answers give nothing away. Marlowe is compelled to drive back to Los Angeles's grubby streets, looking for information.

Acting on a tip, Marlowe visits the office of a man named Larry Victor,' and finds it vacant except for the dead body of a blonde model. Marlowe deduces that Larry Victor is actually Les Valentine and suspects Valentine was framed for the murder, probably by the gambler's mob bosses. Marlowe stays on the case in the city at the risk of not only his own life but his new marriage too. Sustaining tensions, writing in tune with the period and delivering a knockout finale, Parker does nobly by the great Chandler.

If you enjoy those wonderful "hard-boiled" detective novels of days gone by, you'll want to pick up a copy of Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler and RobertB. Parker.