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Mass Market Paperback by Raymond Chandler
Reader Reviews 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: NOTE: Read the "Foreword" . . . afterward!, December 7, 2001 Reviewer: Paul Dana from San Francisco, CA USA Raymond Chandler learned his craft, initially, by writing short stories for the famous hardboiled magazine, "Black Mask." When it came time to move on, Chandler "cannibalized" many of those early stories to create his first four novels, combining plot elements and scenes while expanding and amplifying their passages. During his lifetime, he never allowed the republication of the stories. "Killer In The Rain" presents them, along with an excellent foreword by Phillip Durham in which he discusses Chandler's ability to heighten a description, deepen a mood, to prolong the tension in a situation through these reworkings; or, as Durham puts it, "to see, to sense, and to say." If you want to read these tales for their "story value," though, you're best served by skipping this Foreword until after you've read them. The stories, true to the genre, are invariably violent, even brutal, particularly in their resolutions. ("The rule was," Chandler once wrote, "when in doubt, have someone come through the door with a gun in his hand.") Yet, even at this early stage in his career, as these stories illustrate, both Chandler's singular style and thematic sense were already largely in place. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title
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