Raymond Chandler
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At Frankfurt book fair 2025, I spoke to Simone Menzies about Raymond Chandler. She told me that she had really enjoyed reading Chandler in East Berlin back in the 1980s. Never before had it occurred to me that Chandler had been read behind the Iron Curtain in the former GDR as well. After all, the
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Fat prosperous cops with Chamber of Commerce voices This type of character is depicted in a somewhat stereotypical and two-dimensional manner. The group of characters in question comprises Police Commissioner Randy Starr in The Long Goodbye, Chief of Police Wax in Farewell, My Lovely and Sheriff Petersen in The Long Goodbye. Randy Starr is the
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“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of man, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get and we get things like this.” (The Lady In The Lake, p.151)
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In July 1958, the BBC brought Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler on air together to mark the publication of Chandler’s last book Playback. Here are Fleming’s recollections of that particular day: About this time, Chandler and I were booked to give a 20-minute broadcast for the BBC on ‘The Art of Writing Thrillers’. When the
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Adrian Wooton of the Guardian is right to point out that it is thanks to American writer Mark Coggins, tipped off by John Billheimer, and French journalist Olivier Eyquem that we know that Chandler has a tiny cameo in Billy Wilder’s 1944 movie Double Indemnity. It’s just unmistakeably him. I’d lay money on it,’ says
Raymond Chandler Dead men are heavier than broken hearts 