Killer in the Rain [Hardcover]

Raymond CHANDLER (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Pocket Book (1965)
• ASIN: B000KOT886
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eight short stories Chandler didn't want reprinted!, January 16, 2006

By 

emanuel maris "MannyLunch" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

What the description fails to mention is that Raymond Chandler did not allow this particular group of stories to be republished after their initial appearances in pulp magazines of the thirties.

The reason? These were the eight stories that Chandler cannibalized to form the substance and sub-plots of:

The Black Sleep [taken from "The Curtain" and "Killer In The Rain"],

Farewell My Lovely [using "The Man Who Liked Dogs", "Try The Girl" and "Mandarin's Jade"], and

The Lady In The Lake [assembled with "Bay City Blues", "Lady In The Lake", and "No Crime In The Mountains"],

the first, second and fourth, respectively, of his seven novels featuring the archetypal noir detective Philip Marlowe. (The High Window, The Little Sister and its follow-up The Long Goodbye were all wholly originated as novels, while Playback was rewritten from an unused treatment that did not originally have Marlowe as a character)

Several years after Chandler's death in 1959, Ballantine Books, which in the '60s and '70s had the licensing rights to Chandler's work, went ahead and published these as a group in the book we have here, Killer In The Rain.

Unfortunately, no publisher since has put these eight stories out again - neither Vintage, which publishes all seven novels as well as the contents of the three Ballantine collections of pre-novel short stories (The Simple Art Of Murder, Pick-Up On Noon Street, and Trouble Is My Business); even the two volume collected works published in handsome hardcover form by Library Of America, virtually complete in every other aspect, omits these stories, which leads one to wonder if the Chandler estate - such as it is - has reinstated Chandler's ban on the public having access to these stories - until such time as they truly become public domain.

With the trend towards longer copyright life -designed soley to keep uncreative marketing/publishing people making an easy living off work which, after the creator's death, should belong to the freely accesible world culture domain, instead of putting more effort into marketing the works of the living creators who most deserve the remuneration whilst still alive - many of us may not actually still be here when they can be published by anyone without restriction. So grab a copy of these original masterpieces while there are dealers still with copies!~ MannyLunch

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars NOTE: Read the "Foreword" . . . afterward!, December 7, 2001

By 

Paul Dana (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Killer in the Rain (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Buy this if you've read all his novels, March 13, 2001

By 

skag_vicar (uk) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Killer in the Rain (Mass Market Paperback)

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.