Good collection of pulp classic detective stories. Personally, I like Chandler's novels better even though they're take-offs from these tales. If you like short, hard-boiled crime, this book is for you.

Five stars for the title essay, three stars for the short stories, which fall, sadly, into a familiar rut. But the title essay is worth the price of admission alone, and anyone interested in either American or British crime writing during both our golden ages should give it a read.

Raymond Chandler se sale con esta recopilación de relatos detectivescos. Muy fáciles de leer, pero sobretodo, muy bien escritos. El ensayo del final es bastante curioso. También me ha gustado. Es un libro que he disfrutado muchísimo leyendo y me ha dejado con muchas ganas de más.

Love it or hate it, Chandler's writing has shaped the modern mystery genre more than any other writer. If you have any intention of writing mystery you have to read Chandler and the 1944 essay, The Simple Art of Murder, which opens this collection of his eight longish short stories, is a must-read for anyone who writes crime. You could quibble about Chandler's hardboiled style getting in the way of his precious "realistic" approach to writing detective stories (how absurd now it seems for his characters to be downing quart after quart of rye whisky before driving off to confront some corrupt city councillor and beat them in a shoot-out). His use of now-dated street slang (detectives are "dicks", guns are "irons" women are "dames") gets quite comical to the modern ear, as does his odd, occasionally distracting observations, such as a blonde with smoky green eyes having very small pupils. What? So? But if his lexicon seems dated, his approach to writing about the people who commit crimes, and making the crimes more believable than arcane puzzles of logic to be solved by geniuses with schoolboy French, is with us to this day, alive and kicking. His stories are good, but his essay is sublime. Read it. He outlines exactly the archetypal action hero in the final three paragraphs, and those alone are worth coughing up the dough for.

Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly newsletter with book recommendations galore for the Japanophile/crime fiction/English teacher in all of us.

Son una serie de relatos cortos para quien desee completar la lectura del maestro Chandler.

They are a series of short stories for those who wish to complete master Chandler's reading.

mr chandler you've given me half a mind to give up noir altogether! i'm feeling merciful though, so i'm sure i'll give the genre another chance.
i liked the first short story -- although it completely lacked murder! -- because i think it did its job at being witty, fast paced, and a bit silly. unfortunately each subsequent story only grew more tiresome, and it became hard to keep track of which hard boiled hotel detective and which handsome broad were even talking to each other! and there's only four stories in here! and this is perhaps due to my modern sensibilities, but the acts of violence and murder in this book are not as gruesomely detailed as it seemed they would be from the comically pulpy blurb on the back (i quote: "SLAUGHTER" "BRUTALITY" "HOMOCIDE" in big red letters).
the title essay, "the simple art of murder", was actually pretty interesting to me. (although i find it a bit funny that directly after four subpar mystery stories comes an essay proclaiming that the specific genre that the author works within is good, actually, he promises!) it contains some good quotes, and even though he shit talks my girl agatha christie and acts as if attempting absolute realism is the only way to write a book, i found it a valuable perspective for a mystery enthusiast such as myself.

No Marlowe, but Still Good

The Kindle collection I have has the following stories the first being an essay: 1 The Simple Art of Murder, 2 Spanish Blood, 3 I'll Be Waiting, 4 The King in Yellow, 5 Pearls Are a Nuisance, 6 Pickup on Noon Street, 7 Smart-Aleck Kill, 8 Guns at Cyrano's, Nevada Gas. Make sure you click on the item and check this list of stories. Finally the Table of Contents should be active, highlighted, roll over with mouse. Beware there are bogus items out on Amazon, of inferior quality. This version has no typos either.

07/2018

A collection of non Marlowe stories from pulps in the 1930s, starring an assortment of police officers, hotel dicks and I forget who. They are just okay. His 1950 Atlantic essay is pretty good. He basically puts down all genre and literature too. He makes fun of everyone who imitates him, but admits he imitates Hammett, and does have nice things to say about him.

Some authors struggle with the transition from novel to short story or from a series character to standalone, but not Chandler - the strengths of his Marlowe novels are reflected here even as his main shamus takes a breather. But the true highlight here is the opening essay, an excellent manifesto for hard-boiled fans everywhere.

The book opens with an essay by Chandler. The remaining chapters are skillfully rendered and unrelated short stories. A private eye was absent in nearly all of the stories. Rather, the characters were primarily underworld or otherwise shady hoods and an assortment of molls. Generally they're very good reads.

The opening essay is a reflection on the hardboiled genre. It includes these words about the protagonist:
"But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man in any world...He is a relatively poor man or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know how to do his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry that you ever saw him."

A wonderful excursion into the dangerous and violent world of 1930s Los Angeles, courtesy of that city's great critical observer of the demi-monde, Raymond Chandler, a wordsmith who never wrote a dull paragraph.

There are eight stories here, of which, PEARLS ARE A NUISANCE, is not necessarily the best but certainly the funniest and surely the one with the most binge-drinking. (Frat boys have nothing on a Chandler shamus.) There is also a funny, sharp essay Chandler originally published in The Atlantic concerning the evolution of the detective novel. EVERYONE interested in this popular literary form should read it, then read it again.

Chandler's main characters always have blood in their veins. They are all making their way in a corrupt world, armed with what they can find most handy: loads of money, guns, saps, crooked politicos, and croupiers running dodgy roulette games.

The seedier environs of Los Angeles seem to be a place Chandler absorbed like a sponge. Ditto the posh parts of the young and feral metropolis.
The private detectives in these stories are no saints but they are on the square, very much in the Philip Marlowe mode. (The exception is the amateur shamus in PEARLS ARE A NUISANCE, who is trying to woo his lady friend by finding a cache of pearls an older relative had purloined from her safe.) In another, SPANISH BLOOD, a Mexican-American LAPD detective gives us the rare cop in the genre who is not working a private shamus license.

GOLDFISH is another unusual story in that part of it takes place in Olympia, Washington, and, yes, features valuable goldfish. (A nice change from pearls, rare gems, and cold cash.) If you only know Chandler's work by his novels, you are in for a treat here, and revisiting these stories reminds us of how much of our view of this time and place so many readers owe to this unique writer.

Raymond Chandler simply does not slip up. This collection of short detective fiction is much more diverse than the majority of his Marlowe novels in tone and protagonist, but the quality that he brings to his best work is on display consistently here. Chandler’s stories are sometimes more adventure and sometime more mystery, but he is an extremely even writer who keeps touching all the points one hopes to have played upon in a good thrilling drama. The great thing about a Chandler novel is that it lasts longer. The great thing about a Chandler short story is that it’s punchier and it gives him a chance to explore wider ranges of protagonists and styles.

These were all about equal in 5 star quality, but I especially loved Pearls Are A Nuisance. It follows a Wodehouse type aristocratic boozer who joins forces with a chauffeur to track down a rope or two of stolen pearls to impress his fiancée. He talks like Wooster dropped in the mean streets of LA and he holds his liquor the same way. The essay The Simple Art Of Murder displays what anyone reading him would have already realized, he was an incredibly thoughtful and articulate writer who saw a gaping hole in what was considered respectable mystery fiction and he filled it as well as anyone who has ever attempted the task. His descriptions and metaphors may be considered a bit cheesy at times, but no one does a better job of describing a scene in a way that is evocative without devolving into itself. He can distract at times with his hard boiled poetry, but he doesn’t hang on it pretentiously.