Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, he became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot, appeared in 1933 in Black Mask. He went on to give the private detective a vivid, wisecracking voice. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939, and in his lifetime he published seven novels, an eighth being completed by Robert B. Parker after his death. All but Playback have been made into films. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain.