The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback (Everyman's Library) [Hardcover]

Raymond Chandler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2002

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Creator of the famous Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler elevated the American hard-boiled detective genre to an art form. Chandler’s last four novels, published here in one volume, offer ample opportunity to savor the unique and utterly compelling fictional world that made his works modern classics.

The Lady in the Lake moves Marlowe out of his usual habitat of city streets and into the mountains outside of Los Angeles in his strange search for a missing woman. The Little Sister takes Marlowe to Hollywood, where he tries to find a sweet young thing’s missing brother, uncovering on the way a little blackmail, a lot of drugs, and more than enough murder. In The Long Goodbye, a case involving a war-scarred drunk and his nymphomaniac wife has Marlowe constantly on the move: a psychotic gangster’s on his trail, he’s in trouble with the cops, and more and more corpses keep turning up. Playback features a well-endowed redhead who leads Marlowe to the California coast to solve a tale of big money and, of course, murder.

Throughout these masterpieces, Marlowe’s wry humor and existential sense of his job prove yet again why he has become one of the most recognized and imitated characters in fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

It was a big year for Chandler: not only did Knopf release his full canon in this hardcover trio, which includes some long-out-of-print stories, but Vintage also released a new set of paperbacks (LJ 7/02) of all his books. (LJ 9/15/02)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“Raymond Chandler is a master.” –New York Times

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.” –Ross Macdonald

“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.” –Paul Auster

“The prose rises to heights of unself-conscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action-tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision…The reader is captivated by Chandler’s seductive prose.” –Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books

“Chandler is one of my favorite writers. His books bear rereading every few years. The novels are a perfect snapshot of an American past, and yet the ruined romanticism of the voice is as fresh as if they were written yesterday.” –Jonathan Lethem

“Chandler seems to have invented our post-war dream lives–the tough but tender hero, the dangerous blonde, the rain-washed sidewalks, and the roar of the traffic (and the ocean) in the distance…Chandler is the classic lonely romantic outsider for our times, and American literature, as well as English, would be the poorer for his absence.” –Pico Iyer

With a new Introduction by Tom Hiney

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1016 pages
• Publisher: Everyman's Library (October 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375415025
• ISBN-13: 978-0375415029
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #638,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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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 A nice way to begin Raymond Chandler addiction, May 9, 2004

By 

Jack Purcell (Placitas, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

If you don't already have a bookshelf full of Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald and other excellent mystery writers of those times this is a fine start, three good, solid novels to take up the shelf space of only one. I'd easily give every Raymond Chandler novel he ever penned 5 stars and these are no exception. You won't go wrong reading Chandler mysteries and you won't go wrong with this compact edition of three great books in one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chandler reigns, January 20, 2006

By 

impitbosshereonlevel2 "impitbosshereonlevel2" (Merced) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

I first came across Chandler when I heard the Coen brothers interview and discovered that 'The Big Lebowski' was written in the style of a Chandler novel (name itself being derived from 'The Big Sleep'). This alone interested me enough to buy and read The Big Sleep.

Six novels later, I'm still reading Chandler novels, and still finding each and every one different, interesting and intriguing. The main character Marlowe is a wisecracking detective, wary of women - whom he obviously mistrusts - except for the "bad type of women", for whom he does not particularly care. He is also a complex, intelligent man, often an altruist who goes to some extraordinary lengths for his clients, even when he's not paid.

Novels are usually set in 30's/40's Hollywood and Bay City (which is since called something else), and are especially nostalgic, if you've lived in the surrounding areas.

Chandler's writing is funny and unique - the stories - all told in first person, are written so that the reader is both aware of Marlowe's conscious thoughts, and at the same time, when the ending or some pivotal point in the story arrives - is not. This point is not easy to describe, but it works extremely well - the stories are always amusing, captivating, and suspenseful.

I will easily recommend any Chandler novel for anyone interested in mysteries, as well as to those that enjoy unconventional styles of storytelling.

5.0 out of 5 stars Crime & Punishment, October 15, 2011

By 

RIJU GANGULY "perceptive reader" (India) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

Knopf is the name associated with "Black Mask" stories and hardboiled genre, so it is perhaps suitable that Chandler's greatest works have been published so handsomely by Knopf, that beats even the Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories / The Big Sleep / Farewell, My Lovely / The High Window (Library of America) and Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake / The Little Sister / The Long Goodbye / Playback /Double Indemnity / Selected Essays and Letters (Library of America)version in its elegance & strength. The novels themselves are almost gold-standards of hardboiled or mystery fiction, and should be considered as great pieces of literature on their own. Highly recommended.