Photograph of American novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler.

Raymond Chandler

(1888 - 1959)

An American who spent most of his adolescence in England, Raymond Chandler served in the Canadian Army and the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. He was a successful petroleum executive in California in the twenties, before he turned to writing detective fiction during the Great Depression. He eventually published seven novels, among them The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, all featuring private eye Philip Marlowe as the protagonist. He also cowrote the screenplays for the film noir classics Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train

All Writing

If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.

—Raymond Chandler, 1945

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