Chandler Marlowe

myth:chandler_marlowe

Raymond Chandler gave the hardboiled detective a soul: Philip Marlowe, walking the corrupt streets of Los Angeles with a private code he will not sell — a knight-errant in a fallen world, and Chandler set a stained-glass knight in his very first page to say so. In his essay on the craft he praised Hammett's realism and mocked the artificial puzzle. The detective as the last honest man on a degraded quest. — genre history