Raymond Chandler

When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.-- publisher's description.

Two early mystery novels--"The Big Sleep" and "Farewell, My Lovely"--introduce the world of harboiled 1930s private detective Philip Marlow.

Later Novels and Other Writings begins with The Lady in the Lake (1943). Written during the war, the story takes Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the search for a businessman's missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler's later fiction is evident in The Little Sister (1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and a seemingly...

Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

Guy Haines, a tennis star who hates his wife, is approached on a train by a stranger, Bruno Anthony, who hates his father. Anthony offers a plan: each could kill the other's victim. No motive, no clue would link the two murders save the casual meeting of strangers on a train. Haines doesn't take the plan seriously, however, until his wife is suddenly murdered, and Anthony appears to demand that Haines keep his part of the bargain.

A tennis star (Guy) is harassed on a train by a psychotic (Bruno) who wants to swap murders and who proceeds to carry out his part of the unconfirmed bargain. The British version amplifies Bruno's flamboyance, his homoerotic attraction to Guy, and his psychotic personality.

L.A. private eye Philip Marlowe takes on a blackmail case and follows a trail peopled with murderers, pornographers, nightclub rogues and the spoiled rich.

In this hard boiled detective story, private eye Philip Marlowe gets caught up in a twisted tale of blackmail and murder.