KILLER IN THE RAIN

Rating:
Summary: Buy this if you've read all his novels
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good literature. It contains short stories written for the pulp magazine Black Mask, and provides a fascinating insight into how Chandler created his novels, many of which are based on the short stories within this book. Even if you've never read Chandler before then these stories would provide a fine introduction to the incredible style of writing he created.

Rating:
Summary: a very thrilling detective story
Review: Killer in the Rain is a very thrilling and interesting detective story. It was one of the best stories I have ever read! It is quite easy to read.
The story is about a detective who has to supervise a woman by meeting another man. Then a mysterious murder happens in the house where the woman is staying. From the first to last page you have to guess who the murderer is. The book is not boring because it is not very long. There aren't a lot of people in the story, so it is easy to understand the plot. I liked this book very much and I can recommand it to fans of detective stories.

Rating:
Summary: NOTE: Read the "Foreword" . . . afterward!
Review: 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.