The Simple Art of Murder

Rating:
Summary: Short stories from the creator of Phillip Marlowe.
Review: Raymond Chander fans who associate the author's name only with that of his famous creation, Phillip Marlowe, will enjoy "The Simple Art Of Murder," a collection of Chandler stories originally published in everything from "Dime Detective" magazine to "The Saturday Evening Post." These stories, in which Marlowe as we know him is nowhere to be found, trace the evolution of Chandler's distinctive style and find him experimenting with various characters and points of view. Several stories feature third-person narration, contrary to the Marlowe novels' first-person perspective, and many stories feature protagonists who are obviously Marlowe prototypes. Naturally, all of the tales feature Chandler's poetic dialogue, remarkable descriptions, and enjoyably tangled plots.Highlights of the collection include "The Simple Art of Murder," an essay by the author on the nature of mystery-writing, and the haunting "I'll Be Waiting," in which a lonely hotel detective tries to help a beautiful guest and ends up paying a dearer price than he could ever have imagined. My personal favorite among the stories is the surprisingly funny "Pearls Are A Nuisance," which proves that Chandler really did have a sense of humor. Anyone looking for a fresh perspective on one of mystery's best writers should pick up "The Simple Art Of Murder."

Rating:
Summary: Short stories from the creator of Phillip Marlowe.
Review: Raymond Chander fans who associate the author's name only with that of his famous creation, Phillip Marlowe, will enjoy "The Simple Art Of Murder," a collection of Chandler stories originally published in everything from "Dime Detective" magazine to "The Saturday Evening Post." These stories, in which Marlowe as we know him is nowhere to be found, trace the evolution of Chandler's distinctive style and find him experimenting with various characters and points of view. Several stories feature third-person narration, contrary to the Marlowe novels' first-person perspective, and many stories feature protagonists who are obviously Marlowe prototypes. Naturally, all of the tales feature Chandler's poetic dialogue, remarkable descriptions, and enjoyably tangled plots. Highlights of the collection include "The Simple Art of Murder," an essay by the author on the nature of mystery-writing, and the haunting "I'll Be Waiting," in which a lonely hotel detective tries to help a beautiful guest and ends up paying a dearer price than he could ever have imagined. My personal favorite among the stories is the surprisingly funny "Pearls Are A Nuisance," which proves that Chandler really did have a sense of humor. Anyone looking for a fresh perspective on one of mystery's best writers should pick up "The Simple Art Of Murder."

Rating:
Summary: Art made to look simple
Review: The essay which gives this collection its title is the apotheosis of Chandler - the absolute distillation of the meaning of "Chandleresque" (or for that matter "Hammett-ness"). Here Chandler steps back from the creation of Noir fiction and, in a sometimes bitter or shrp way, comes down hard on the Hams and Part-timers of a literary form he believed to be worthy of elevation from the term genre.

Chandler chose to use the conventions of the Crime Novella format to his own - rather than any readership or editors - ends. Less monothematic than the given Short Story format, pre-flavoured with the expectations of the Crime buyer, the Novella and its narrow context of the stark contrasts of the Urban existence allow Chandler to define a notion of modern man and the modern morality of the individual in a socially dislocated environment - years before Welles and decades ahead of the Quention Tarantino's who currently tease us with the same issues and questions.

In "The Simple Art of Murder" the short stories and mini-novellas are sharp and compelling; in the title-giving essay, Chandler sits back and confesses to what compels him to write so. To paraphrase the author himself (speaking of Hammett for whom he had a great admiration), he took the art of murder from the counttry vicarage and "gave it back to the people on the street, to whom it really belonged anyway". Marlowe is silhouetted by his creator in his concluding idea of why a man such as him will always exist, why his morality must exist .. "down these mean streets a man must go, a man who is neither tarnished nor afraid...". Written with so much conviction that his argument stands up like a spoon in it, for this essay alone - and the future years of musing on and quoting whole tracts that will instantly lodge in your memory for ever - no-one interested in what underlies the fascination of "noir" should go down a dark alley at night without it.

Rating:
Summary: Art made to look simple
Review: The essay which gives this collection its title is the apotheosis of Chandler - the absolute distillation of the meaning of "Chandleresque" (or for that matter "Hammett-ness"). Here Chandler steps back from the creation of Noir fiction and, in a sometimes bitter or shrp way, comes down hard on the Hams and Part-timers of a literary form he believed to be worthy of elevation from the term genre.

Chandler chose to use the conventions of the Crime Novella format to his own - rather than any readership or editors - ends. Less monothematic than the given Short Story format, pre-flavoured with the expectations of the Crime buyer, the Novella and its narrow context of the stark contrasts of the Urban existence allow Chandler to define a notion of modern man and the modern morality of the individual in a socially dislocated environment - years before Welles and decades ahead of the Quention Tarantino's who currently tease us with the same issues and questions.

In "The Simple Art of Murder" the short stories and mini-novellas are sharp and compelling; in the title-giving essay, Chandler sits back and confesses to what compels him to write so. To paraphrase the author himself (speaking of Hammett for whom he had a great admiration), he took the art of murder from the counttry vicarage and "gave it back to the people on the street, to whom it really belonged anyway". Marlowe is silhouetted by his creator in his concluding idea of why a man such as him will always exist, why his morality must exist .. "down these mean streets a man must go, a man who is neither tarnished nor afraid...". Written with so much conviction that his argument stands up like a spoon in it, for this essay alone - and the future years of musing on and quoting whole tracts that will instantly lodge in your memory for ever - no-one interested in what underlies the fascination of "noir" should go down a dark alley at night without it.

Rating:
Summary: worth it for the essay alone
Review: The stories are very good, although not as good as Chandler's more polished novels. Nevertheless, it's interesting to see the germs of some of his later ideas as they first appeared in short story form in magazines like Black Mask. The opening essay, entitled "The Simple Art of Murder," alone makes the collection worth it for its insight into the development of detective fiction, and the hard-boiled variety in particular. Chandler regarded the detective story as serious literature, and his essay no doubt influenced many critics to do the same. He remains one of the best detective story writers of all time - and a damn fine writer for any genre.

Rating:
Summary: More Stories About Detection
Review: The title essay has Raymond Chandler's thoughts on the detective story. Fiction has always tried to be realistic, but tastes change (perceptions of reality). Detective stories often outsell the best-sellers of yesteryear (perhaps because the situations they describe are always current, even if the language and costumes change). Chandler contrasts the writings of Hammett and others to the classic post-WW One fiction (which is usually contained in the houses of the rich and powerful). Chandler lists the problems with A.A. Milne's "The Red House Mystery". They are too contrived, and disregard life in the real world. The realism of Hammett (and others) is how they describe the world that is seldom reported in your daily newspaper, except obliquely ("Zoning Board Adopts Changes"). This essay offers wisdom and an overview of detective stories.

"Pearls Are A Nuisance" reads like a satire on detective stories. Walter represents the classic wealthy detective of English fiction, Henry the hard-boiled detective of American fiction. They try to recover a stolen pearl necklace, which is "Dutch" (slang for fake). But a high ransom tells Walter they are real. Walter recovers the pearls in a surprise ending.
"Spanish Blood" starts with the murder of a political opponent. A detective is assigned to search the murdered man's country cabin - and finds a dead body! Sam finds an informer and speaks to him before he is shot. Sam follows this lead, but winds up captured. Sam's speech leads to more dead bodies, and the case is now closed. The last pages present the shocking surprise ending.

"The King in Yellow" begins with a musician waking up the whole floor in a hotel. The "night clerk" tosses him out; but the musician knows the owner, so Steve is canned. Steve looks up an address, and finds the first body. He meets more people, and finds more bodies. When he returns to the hotel, an old killing is brought up. Following this clue leads to the murderers, and the old scandal that caused them.
"I'll Be Waiting" is about one-night's events at a hotel. A woman checks in and tells the night clerk she's waiting for a visitor. The porter tells Tony that a stranger wants to see him (a warning about another guest). Tony warns this guest, who quickly leaves. But something happens that affects Tony's family.



Rating:
Summary: "Pulp Fiction" at its very best
Review: Those years of the 30's gave us the incredible "pulp" magazines of several genres, basically adventure, western, science fiction, mystery and detective. The detective pulps such as "Black Mask" and "Dime Detective" were training grounds for the like of Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler.

This volume gives us Raymond Chandler's essay of the detective genre plus twelve novellas and short stories basically from the pulp magazines.

Four of these are Phillip Marlowe adventures, all written before the novels. Of these, "Goldfish" and "Trouble is My Business" truly stand out. However, there are three others: "Smart-Aleck Kill" with Johnny Dalmas, the notable "Guns at Cyrano's" with Ted Carmady, and "The King in Yellow" featuring hotel detective turned private eye Steve Grayce. Each of these three stories feature a very obvious antecedent to Phillip Marlowe.

Raymond Chandler is noted especially for his concise but rich descriptions of locale and also of characters. These are practically photographic descriptions. Also, there's Chandler's dialogue complete with sardonic humor and wisecracks. The plot is swift paced with nary a dull moment. He was well trained by BLACK MASK's editor who suggested that whenever the plot threatens to bog down, have a man with a gun in his hand walk into the scene.

Dashell Hammett and Raymond Chandler shaped the tough private eye genre which spawned Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Richard Prather's Shell Scott, Robert Parker's Spenser, and also today's police detective genre, most notably Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch.

Chandler termed this genre, as opposed to the more genteel Agatha Christy type of mystery, "realistic". Well, that's arguable. I don't know about you, but I don't ordinarily find dead bodies whenever I walk into an empty room, nor are the people who knock on my door likely to have guns in their hands, or even on their persons, so I question the "realistic" label. But these stories are good fun. The body count is rather high in most of the stories, and you can often figure out who the murderer is by eliminating the characters who get killed along the way.

Be that as it may, this volume is indeed highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: "Pulp Fiction" at its very best
Review: Those years of the 30's gave us the incredible "pulp" magazines of several genres, basically adventure, western, science fiction, mystery and detective. The detective pulps such as "Black Mask" and "Dime Detective" were training grounds for the like of Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler.

This volume gives us Raymond Chandler's essay of the detective genre plus twelve novellas and short stories basically from the pulp magazines.

Four of these are Phillip Marlowe adventures, all written before the novels. Of these, "Goldfish" and "Trouble is My Business" truly stand out. However, there are three others: "Smart-Aleck Kill" with Johnny Dalmas, the notable "Guns at Cyrano's" with Ted Carmady, and "The King in Yellow" featuring hotel detective turned private eye Steve Grayce. Each of these three stories feature a very obvious antecedent to Phillip Marlowe.

Raymond Chandler is noted especially for his concise but rich descriptions of locale and also of characters. These are practically photographic descriptions. Also, there's Chandler's dialogue complete with sardonic humor and wisecracks. The plot is swift paced with nary a dull moment. He was well trained by BLACK MASK's editor who suggested that whenever the plot threatens to bog down, have a man with a gun in his hand walk into the scene.

Dashell Hammett and Raymond Chandler shaped the tough private eye genre which spawned Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Richard Prather's Shell Scott, Robert Parker's Spenser, and also today's police detective genre, most notably Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch.

Chandler termed this genre, as opposed to the more genteel Agatha Christy type of mystery, "realistic". Well, that's arguable. I don't know about you, but I don't ordinarily find dead bodies whenever I walk into an empty room, nor are the people who knock on my door likely to have guns in their hands, or even on their persons, so I question the "realistic" label. But these stories are good fun. The body count is rather high in most of the stories, and you can often figure out who the murderer is by eliminating the characters who get killed along the way.

Be that as it may, this volume is indeed highly recommended.