Enjoyable but needed definite breaks between the stories or they tended to meld together for me.

Free download available at Faded Page.

Awesome collection of short detective stories!

Raymond talks crap about the crime genre and why his books are better than everyone else’s… kinda brat

Love the essay that begins the book.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an ardent fan of Raymond Chander's work. That being said, "The Simple Art of Murder" was an easily digestible collection of short stories, along with the eponymously titled essay. In typical Chandler flair, these stories transport the reader back to an era when the criminals had more style, the heroes weren't all that heroic, and while the movies may have been black and white, the characters were anything but. Each story was distinctively different, while still being as familiar as an old friend. At least to fans of Chandler, that is.

For completists only.

The best thing by far is the essay after which the book is named.

This book takes its title from the first of five entries. Rather than a short story, it is an essay by Raymond Chandler giving his defining opinion on the art of the mystery. Chandler critiques some well known mysteries and characters: “The Red House Mystery: by A.A. Milne (Milne’s only mystery), Dorothy Sayer’s “Busman’s Holiday,” authors Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and others of the genre. It is an interesting read with the comparisons and his perspective of the subject of mystery writers and their books.

The next three stories are along the usual lines that Chandler is known for: a cop who is set up in a frame and finds he has to be the one to untangle the net around him. Two stories take place in hotels, involving the hotel detectives and some questionable guests.

The fourth one is more along the lines of P.G. Wodehouse. Walter, the main character, speaks in in a very educated manner, seems to have pots of money and time to spare. He receives a call, one morning, from Ellen Macintosh, his fianceé. She is nurse to Mrs. Penruddock, a very wealthy widow.

It seems Mrs. Penruddock’s pearl necklace has been stolen and the suspect is a chauffeur who worked for Mrs. Penruddock for a few months and suddenly left. Ellen feels that Walter should be able to find the suspect and get the pearls back and not involve the police. It seems the pearls are fake and Ellen doesn’t want it known and embarrass Mrs. Penruddock.

Walter manages to locate the chauffeur, one Mr. Henry Eichelberger. His excuse for looking Eichelberger up is that Eichelberger tried to kiss Ellen and Walter plans to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This meeting is the start of a madcap series of events as the two men work together to recover the stolen pearls. Shades of Bertie and Jeeves!

Actually it might have been this book I read or it might have been another, but they all stand in together so fine. Anyway I went out to LA for a couple of weeks for different reasons and I obviously decided I needed to read a Chandler, and I picked this one up at the Last Bookstore in downtown LA (which is fine but quite frankly, yo, LA friends, if this is your answer to the Strand you don’t have an answer to the Strand.), and it’s fine. I had forgotten that Chandler reworked all of his short stories into his novels (incidentally, this is the reason for the famous (maybe not that famous) ‘who killed the chaffeur’ question in the Big Sleep, which is basically that he kept a previous story whole cloth without realizing that his changed made this plot point irrelevant) which was kind of fun anyway because I got to relive my favorite of his novels without having to re read them altogether. Chandler is, you know, Chandler, he writes like nobody’s business but the plots don’t make any sense. Drop, but only cause I have all the novels that he reworked these into.

Cuando empecé a leer “El simple arte de matar” de Raymond Chandler pensaba que iba a ser una especie de manual sobre la escritura del autor y, en principio, lo era porque comienza con un ensayo sobre las novelas de detectives. Pero es una introducción a la colección de relatos cortos que engloba este libro. Podría parecer que el autor nos ha engañado y que no quiere contarnos sobre su labor de creación de este tipo de novelas. Sin embargo, cuando se termina la última página vemos que ha sido mejor que el autor nos mostrase esa técnica en lugar de explicárnosla. Si lo hubiera hecho, tal vez hubiera sido, como lo es, un breve ensayo porque realmente parece muy sencillo escribir una novela de detectives. Sigues a un personaje y vas viendo paso a paso todo lo que ocurre, como si en lugar de leerlo lo estuvieses viendo, como si fuera una película que pasa ante tus ojos. No hay sorpresas inmediatas. Vemos como los personajes preparan sus armas y las utilizan, y el resultado es previsible. Con esto no estoy diciendo que no haya tensión; al contrario. Sabes las posibilidades y las esperas, aunque no sabes cómo serán. Lo único que tienes claro es que serán coherentes, no se sacará nada de la manga. Te dejará pistas suficientes para que tú veas las posibilidades.

Según lo anteriormente dicho, se podría pensar que el estilo de Chandler sería pobre, pero es todo lo contario. Hay imágenes y comparaciones tan ricas como los ojos del color del humo; expresiones que nos hacen esbozar una sonrisa por su lógica y su evocación visual. No tiene que contarnos nada más para imaginarnos la situación. Y los diálogos. Esos diálogos maravillosos que no puedes evitar leer dos y tres veces. Además de los diálogos, lo que más me ha llamado la atención es ese detallismo en las descripciones. Sería fácil reconstruir cada escenario siguiendo las descripciones detalladas y muy expresivas que llegan incluso a hacernos oler el ambiente de una habitación o el perfume de una mujer. Descripciones que te incitan a tomar un mapa y seguir el itinerario de los personajes calle por calle.

Al ser un conjunto de relatos cortos, podríamos pensar que no tienen nada en común y así nos sorprendemos con la aparición de personajes de los que habíamos leído en relatos anteriores, con lo que podríamos considerar la obra como un relato extenso en el cual el hilo conductor no es los personajes o las historias, sino el ambiente e incluso podríamos afinar todavía más diciendo que la protagonista es la ciudad con sus aspectos oscuros y peligrosos, en la que los personajes se mueven y entrecruzan, viven y mueren. Y, sobre todo, interactúan.

Un libro para aquellos que alguna vez disfrutamos viendo a Bogart y Bacal mirándose a los ojos y diciendo esas frases que se nos han quedado grabadas: “No tienes que decir nada ni hacer nada. Sólo silba. ¿Sabes silbar, no? Juntas los labios y soplas”.

A very mixed bag of early Chandler, with one pretty good story, and another okay. The introduction The Simple Art of Murder is now badly dated, and a bit of a whine about other authors.

Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer (there must after all be a few) competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well.



1. Spanish Blood
This has all the elements of good noir, except characters you care about. Clearly early work.

He leaned over softly and turned the knob on the radio. A waltz formed itself dimly on the warm air. A tinsel waltz, but a waltz. He turned the volume up. The music gushed from the loudspeaker in a swirl of shadowed melody. Since Vienna died, all waltzes are shadowed.

2. I'll Be Waiting 4-star
This is clearly head-and-shoulders above the other stories, with very familiar Chandler prose and pacing, plus a femme-fatale worth far more lines than she got. Definitely worth reading.

The little Spanish orchestra was in an archway, playing with muted strings small seductive melodies that were more like memories than sounds.

3. The King in Yellow 4-star
This is pretty good, great femme fatale, hard-bitten gumshoe, but too much “info-dump” solution at the end.



4. Pearls Are a Nuisance

5. Pickup on Noon Street 3-star
This is more complex than the previous stories, and it's clearly Chandler, but uneven.
Wow, best femme fatale name ever: "Token Ware" ...

6. Smart-Aleck Kill
DNF

7. Guns at Cyrano's
DNF

8. Nevada Gas
Started out okay, but a bit wooden.
DNF


Notes:

2.0% "...
Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer (there must after all be a few) competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well."

3.0% "The first chapter is a real moan about detective fiction in general, and badly dated, but with some good points. Tiresome though."

4.0% ".... dull"

14.0% "Not compelling. This was before any of the Marlowe books."

17.0% "... all the elements are there in Spanish Blood, but the story feels very pedestrian. We don't empathise with any of the characters."

18.0% "... the second story starts very well, almost elegiac."

22.0% "... the second story "l'll Be Waiting" is terrific. Very noir, very spare."

29.0% "... Dolores Chiozza. A fabulous femme fatale!"

36.0% ".... 3rd story “The King in Yellow” is pretty good, great femme fatale, hard-bitten gumshoe, but too much “info-dump” solution at the end."

40.0% "... the 4th story is written in quite a strange style. It's like Chandler is not sure of himself. Not very good."

49.0% "... the 4th story, Pearls Are a Nuisance, was not great. Weird style"

54.0% "... wow, best femme fatale name ever: Token Ware."

61.0% "... Pickup on Noon Street was more complex than the previous stories, clearly Chandler but uneven."

67.0% "... Smart-Aleck Kill is not working for me."

86.0% "... Guns at Cyrano's is not working for me."

I was tricked! Tricked I tell you! Some website I read listed The Simple Art of Murder as one of the books in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe series. It isn’t! I’ve learned an important lesson here … you can’t believe everything on the web. Needless to say, this is a devastating revelation. Not only did I not get my Philip Marlowe fix, but I’m starting to think Alex Jones’ claim on YouTube that ‘the government is using juice boxes to make children gay as a means to slow and eventually reverse population growth’ is bullshit too. My world has gone topsy-turvy.

Instead, The Simple Art of Murder consists of an essay of literary criticism concerning detective fiction along with a collection of short stories. I found the essay rather boring and skipped most of it, but the stories have all the classic elements of Chandler’s gumshoe fiction … uh … except for that one thing … Philip Marlowe … the wisecracking tough guy … he’s nowhere to be found.

This crushing disappointment has been offset somewhat by the fact that the book is really good. I would describe it as … and I think I came up with this phrase myself … “hard-boiled detective fiction”. Good, right? It sets it apart from that soft-boiled fiction where the runny yolk gets into your hash browns.

Anyhooooo, I give the book four Marlowes (which is four more than you’ll find in the text).